Celo Raised $77.3M in Funding
Celo is a mobile-first blockchain that makes DeFi tools and services accessible to anyone with a mobile phone, has raised $77.3M in Funding.
Celo has raised $77.3M in funding to promote the adoption of Web3 by common people worldwide across a variety of use cases.
Expanding Ecosystem
Celo’s expanding ecosystem of mission-aligned businesses includes Loam, impact market, Circular Impact, Hyperlane, RedStone, Jia, and Tatum.
“Great entrepreneurs can raise in any market,” says Rene Reinsberg, Celo Co-Founder and Celo Foundation President. “I am immensely proud of our ecosystem projects in raising over $77 million across various venture rounds. This demonstrates how bullish investor sentiment is in driving mainstream adoption of Web3 and real-world use cases for real people.”
Hyperlane, an interchain communication protocol, and application development platform raised $18.5 million in seed funding, led by early-stage crypto venture capital fund Variant. Hyperlane will provide developers with the infrastructure to build better interchain applications by promoting cross-chain communication and interoperable security.
“Our mission at Hyperlane is to connect blockchains with seamless interfaces for developers so that they can serve users on any chain, and we’re thrilled to bring our interoperability capabilities to the vibrant developer ecosystem on Celo,” said Jon Kol, co-founder at Hyperlane. Asa Oines and Nam Chu Hoai, also co-founders at Hyperlane, were among the Celo platform’s first engineers at cLabs.
ReFi Projects
ReFi projects have also raised a collective $6 million, including Loam ($4M), which aims to create a marketplace for farming data to incentivize farmers to engage in regenerative practices; impact market ($1M), which unlocks access to finance and implements human empowerment mechanisms, like Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) for vulnerable communities; and Circular Impact ($1M), a platform built in partnership with Sanergy, which will enable circular economy companies to quantify and monetize their positive impact using Web3 infrastructure, starting with carbon.
“As a ReFi project, there’s no better place to build than Celo,” says Birju Shah, Loam CEO. “Celo’s ecosystem is staunchly committed to building a regenerative world, and cares deeply about helping people and the planet––as with Loam’s community of farmers across the U.S., Brazil, Europe, India, and Africa––and creating the conditions of prosperity for all.”
DeFi Platforms
Decentralized finance platforms, including RedStone, which delivers frequently updated, diverse data for dapps and smart contracts, raised $7 million; Jia, which provides blockchain-based financing to businesses in emerging markets, raised $4.3 million in pre-seed funding.
Blockchain development platform Tatum, an early Celo Foundation grantee, has also secured $41.5 million. “The Celo ecosystem has been supporting Tatum from the very beginning, committed to our mission to revolutionize blockchain application creation, and integrating our tooling platform for their Web3 projects,” Tatum CEO Jiri Kobelka says. “We’re proud to be partners in this dynamic and fast-growing ecosystem of creators and builders.” Blockchain SaaS startup MakerDojo, which also supports Celo, further raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding, led by Leo Capital.
Other Celo ecosystem projects currently raising funds include Celo entrepreneur-in-residence Michael Keating, formerly the founder and CEO of Scoot, who is launching a new electric mobility venture, and Mento, a decentralized stability protocol powering stable assets on the Celo blockchain, among others.
Aiming to bring Web3 to every mobile device by mapping encrypted phone numbers to wallet addresses and granting access to an ecosystem of dapps via low-powered smartphone devices, the network is built on the industry-leading carbon-negative Celo platform and gives founders and builders access to 18.6+ million wallet addresses in more than 150 countries worldwide.
About Celo Foundation
The decentralized, open source, mobile-first Celo platform, developed with backing from the Celo Foundation in order to help create a carbon-negative financial system that fosters prosperity for all. The Foundation follows the principles of the Celo community and supports initiatives that promote and support an inclusive financial system, such as education, technological research, environmental health, community participation, and ecological outreach.
SOURCE
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221027005377/en/Celo-Ecosystem-Projects-Raise-Over-77-Million-in-Funding-to-Support-Financial-Inclusion-Interoperability-Regenerative-Finance-ReFi-and-More
