Hong Kong crypto player Amber raises $100m
Hong Kong crypto financial services provider Amber Group has raised a $100 million Series B round led by China Renaissance. It is said to value the company at $1 billion.
Tiger Global Management, Arena Holdings, DCM Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners, Sky9 Capital, A&T Capital, and Gobi Partners also participated, as did crypto specialists Pantera Capital, Blockchain.com, and Coinbase Ventures.
Coinbase led a $28 million Series A in 2019 at a valuation around $100 million. Early investors tended to be crypto-focused entities, including Dragonfly Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Paradigm, and Polychain Capital. The shift to mainstream investors is seen as a sign of sector maturation.
“From an employer branding perspective, we are trying to attract global talents, and many of those are potentially new to crypto,” Michael Wu, co-founder and CEO of Amber, told TechCrunch. “For them, seeing these more traditional and familiar names backing Amber helps make them more interested in joining Amber potentially.”
Amber helps more than 700 institutional clients buy and sell cryptocurrency products, generate yield, manage risk, and access liquidity via bases in Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, and Vancouver. It has cumulatively traded more than $500 billion across around 100 electronic exchanges and claims assets under management of more than $1.5 billion.
Annualized revenue based on the first four months of 2021 is now $500 million, 70% of which comes from institutional clients such as hedge funds, family offices, and corporations. There is also a retail business featuring a consumer-facing app with about 100,000 registered users. The fresh capital will support the hiring of technical, legal, and sales staff.
It comes one month after Tiger and Dragonfly joined a $40 million Series A for Hong Kong’s Babel Finance, a similar service provider whose offering also includes educational resources for mainstream investors. Babel also received backing from several generalist VCs, including ZhenFund, Lightspeed China Partners, and Zoo Capital, an early-stage arm of Boyu Capital.
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