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A16z Leads $51.5M Round for Web3 Fraud Protection Startup Sardine
Sardine customers include FTX and Blockchain.com.
By Brandy Betz
Updated May 11, 2023, 5:53 p.m. Published Sep 20, 2022, 2:12 p.m.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the $51.5 million Series B funding round for Sardine, a real-time fraud prevention product for financial technology and Web3 customers. The capital will be used to accelerate product development and marketing and sales efforts, according to a press release.
“We believe Sardine is a key payments infrastructure provider across traditional and decentralized finance, and we’re proud to continue to support this team on their next stage of growth," said a16z Growth Fund partner Alex Immerman in the statement. “Sardine’s fraud-fighting technology helps move money fast and without risk, and their rapid growth is a testament to the criticality and strength of their offering.”
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In January, a16z announced $9 billion in capital committed across its Venture, Growth and Bio Funds. Four months later, the firm debuted its fourth crypto fund with a record-setting $4.5 billion in capital.
San Francisco-based Sardine offers real-time protection by combining traditional finance data like bank account history with identity, behavior and device intelligence to better identify risks. The startup includes Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) verification often required for crypto companies plus sanction and transaction monitoring to prevent fraud at the time of account opening, funding or ongoing transactions. Its customers include crypto exchanges FTX and Blockchain.com.
Sardine also has an instant settlement offering that allows users to connect bank accounts and cards to on-ramp to crypto and instantly purchase over 30 different crypto assets or non-fungible tokens (NFT). The startup recently launched its direct fiat to NFT checkout product in partnership with National Football League legend Tom Brady’s Autograph NFT platform.
Other investors in the round included XYZ, Nyca Partners, Sound Ventures, Activant Capital, Visa, Google Ventures, Eric Schmidt, Vikram Pandit, The General Partnership, NAventures, ING Ventures, ConsenSys, Cross River Digital Ventures, Alloy Labs, and Uniswap Labs Ventures.
Read more: Consumers Lost Over $1B to Crypto Fraud Since January 2021, FTC Says
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