# Blockchain platform Alchemy raises 250M in Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz

San Francisco-based blockchain web services company Alchemy announced a $250 million Series C fundraising round led by Andreessen Horowitz on Thursday, bringing its current valuation to $3.5 billion.

This announcement comes hot on the heels of a late April $80 million Series B, which previously valued the startup at $505 million. Pantera Capital, Redpoint, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, DFJ and Lee Fixel’s Addition also participated in the Series C round. According to founders Nikil Viswanathan and Jon Lau, the company is “very profitable” and thus far, has not spent any of that money, but plans to use the new capital to build a community around blockchain. 

Alchemy was founded in 2017 but didn’t launch its product until August of 2020. According to reporting from TechCrunch, the company’s thirty-seven employees now service clients that include every major nonfungible token (NFT) platform, UNICEF, Adobe and PricewaterhouseCoopers, powering in excess of $45 billion in transaction volume.

The company wrote in its blog post announcement:

“Alchemy is doing for blockchain and Web3 what AWS did for the internet. It provides developers with the tools they need to easily and efficiently create mainstream blockchain applications, helping them turn their ideas into wildly successful businesses”

Alchemy currently has two offices (one in New York and one in San Francisco) but indicated that they intend to open more in the United States and abroad.

Viswanathan and Lau, who also serve as the company’s CEO and chief training officer, respectively, attended Stanford University and worked at Google prior to their latest venture. Investors from early fundraising rounds included celebrities like Jay Z and Will Smith and Yahoo Founder Jerry Yang. “Empowering developers is the key to bringing the magic of blockchain to the world,” Viswanathan wrote in a statement at the time.

Alchemy previously announced its partnership with blockchain entertainment platform Flow on March 25th. Cointelegraph also reported in July that the company was building new tools in an effort to transform blockchain development.

Back in June, Andreessen Horowitz launched a $2.2 billion fund focused on crypto venture investment. At the time, it was the largest ever of its kind.