Hedge Fund Billionaire Steven Cohen's Point72 Leads $21M Funding Round in Messari

Data analytics platform Messari has closed a $21 million Series A funding round led by hedge fund billionaire Steven Cohen's Point72 Ventures.

• The round is New York-based Point72 Ventures’ first completed investment in the crypto space.
• The funding will be used by Messari to triple its engineering and research headcount, expand its market intelligence platform and launch new token governance tools.
• “We have a 35-person team now and we will expand to 75 in the next few quarters,” Messari CEO Ryan Selkis told CoinDesk. “We are going to be tripling in size particularly the product engineering side and expanding our analyst hub to include 1,000 contract analysts.”
• “What is notable is that we have affiliates from pretty much all of the major Western exchanges, and custodians. So Blockchain Ventures, Kraken, Gemini, Coinbase and Alameda,” he said.
• Other investors include Underscore VC, Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Capital, Blockchain Ventures, CMS Holdings, Gemini Frontier Fund, Kraken Ventures and Nascent. Angel investors include former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer and Anchorage CEO Diogo Monica, Messari said Thursday.
• Point72 Ventures operating partner Adam Carson has joined Messari’s board of directors.
• Back in May, it emerged that Point72, Millennium Management and Matrix Capital Management were all at varying stages of setting up dedicated cryptocurrency investment vehicles.

Read more: Hedge Fund Giants Millennium, Matrix and Point72 Standing Up DeFi Funds: Sources