Decentralized identity startup Magic raises $27 million in Series A funding from Tiger Global and others

Magic Labs (formerly Fortmatic), a decentralized identity startup that provides "passwordless login" solutions, has raised $27 million in a Series A funding round.

The round was led by London-based venture capital firm Northzone, with participation from new and existing investors, including Tiger Global, Volt Capital, Digital Currency Group, CoinFund, and Placeholder. More than 80 angel investors also backed the round, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Github CTO Jason Warner, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou, and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant, among others.

As part of the deal, Northzone partner Wendy Xiao Schadeck has also joined Magic's board, Magic co-founder and CEO Sean Li told The Block.

With fresh capital at hand, San Francisco-based Magic plans to scale its platform and expand its team. Magic's current headcount is over 30, and the firm is looking to hire at least 30 more people across product, engineering, design, marketing, and finance functions, said Li.

As for scaling Magic's platform, Li said the firm aims to get more developers building on Magic. Currently, "tens of thousands" of developers utilize Magic to onboard users sans passwords, he said.

Passwordless login

Launched last year, the Magic platform provides developers with a plug-and-play software development kit (SDK) that enables various passwordless login methods for users, including Magic links, social login, and WebAuthn. Li said it is a "breeze" for developers to offer Magic authentication to their end-users with "just a couple lines of code."

Magic supports various blockchains, including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Solana, Polkadot, and Polygon. Support for more blockchains is to be added, including Bitcoin, said Li.

As of its business model, Magic charges developers a fee per login similar to cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services, said Li.

"We’re securing millions of user identities, growing rapidly week over week," he said. Magic's customers are both crypto and non-crypto, including Polymarket, Showtime, Nifty’s, Async Art, virtual event platform Brella, and software firm Uservoice, said Li.

The Series A round brings Magic's total funding to date to $31 million. Last year, the firm raised $4 million in seed funding. Both the rounds were equity rounds, said Li, adding that Magic is looking to raise more funds in the near future.