Internet infrastructure firm Auradine raises $81 million

A little-known web3 infrastructure upstart founded just last year has closed a large deal.

Driving the news: Silicon Valley-based Auradine raised $81 million in its initial round of fundraising led by venture capital firms Celesta Capital and Mayfield, a noteworthy sum given the dearth of tech and crypto deals lately.

Details: The raise consists of $71 million in equity financing, along with a $10 million credit line. Other investors included Marathon Digital Holdings, Cota Capital, DCVC, and Stanford University.

Zoom in: Auradine wants to build hardware and software solutions that will allow potential customers to scale without sacrificing security or user privacy.

• "What the web has not been geared for as it exists today is this notion of a distributed capability. Everything is centralized," Celesta's Sriram Viswanathan said.
• "As a consequence it is prone to security compromises or privacy issues."

What they're saying: CEO Rajiv Khemani tells Axios that the company will build both hardware and software solutions to address those issues, with the first of its products expected this summer.

• The firm's initial target customer base will likely be Layer 1 blockchains. Longer term it expects to appeal to Layer 2s — systems or protocols built on top of an existing blockchain — as well as other sectors including healthcare and government.

Fun fact: The company's name combines the latin root for gold, "aura," and "dyn," the unit of force.