Blockchain interoperability protocol Axelar raises $25 million in Series A funding

Axelar, a decentralized protocol that connects users across multiple blockchains, has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round.

The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participants from Dragonfly Capital, Galaxy Digital, North Island Ventures, Robot Ventures, Lemniscap, SCB 10X, Divergence Ventures, and others. Angel investors, including Terra co-founder, Do Kwon, and Catalyst Sports & Media CEO Happy Walters, also joined the round, among others.

Axelar declined to comment whether the funding was secured via an equity round or a token sale when contacted.

With fresh capital at hand, Axelar looks to scale its team of 15 to support more blockchain integrations and accelerate the development, co-founder and CEO Sergey Gorbunov told The Block.

Axelar is hiring for technical, including blockchain engineers, as well as non-technical roles such as community and business development, said Gorbunov.

The Axelar protocol is currently live on testnet and enables developers to build applications on any blockchain platform and leverage cross-chain liquidity. Developers of Polkadot, Terra, and Avalanche blockchains are already utilizing the protocol, said Axelar.

"We're currently in a testnet mode where ecosystems partners are learning how to setup nodes on the network, send transactions, and they help us to build monitoring tools, dashboards, and wallets integrations," Gorbunov told The Block. "We'll continue iterating through the testnet deployments adding more features and integrations until the network is robust and ready to launch."

Gorbunov declined to comment on Axelar's mainnet launch timeline. The network is being developed by the founding team members of Algorand: Gorbunov and Georgios Vlachos.

The Series A brings Axelar's total funding to nearly $29 million. Last November, the project raised $3.75 million in seed funding. Venture capital firm DCVC, Binance X — the crypto exchange's smart chain accelerator fund — and AngelList CEO and founder Naval Ravikant participated in the seed round at the time.