Sequoia Capital China Leads $400M Pre-IPO Round in Bitcoin Miner Bitmain

| Updated
by Bhushan Akolkar · 3 min read
Sequoia Capital China Leads $400M Pre-IPO Round in Bitcoin Miner Bitmain
Photo: BITMAINtech / Twitter

The latest round of funding by Sequoia Capital has helped Bitmain to take its valuations to a whopping $12 billion.

According to the latest report by China Money Network, the Chinese arm of venture capital giant Sequoia Capital has invested a huge sum of $400 million in the pre-IPO of the in one of the most popular local bitcoin miner and mining chip designer Bitmain Technologies Ltd.

This news comes just within a week of the reports of Bitmain planning to launch an Initial Public Offering (IPO). In the last few years, Bitmain has emerged as one of the dominant players and leading manufacturer of Bitcoin mining chips. While talking to Bloomberg, Bitmain co-founder and Chinese billionaire Jihan Wu said that the company has generated $2.5 billion in revenues last year.

After the latest investment by Sequoia, Bitmain’s valuations have soared to $12 billion, according to insider reports. The insiders also claim that chip-manufacturing giant is planning to go public by launching an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in Hong Kong by the September 2018 this year thereby taking its valuation and market capitalization somewhere between $30 to $40 billion by the end of this year.

Wu said that the company’s plan to go public is a “landmark” decision and one-of-its-kind in the cryptocurrency space which would mark a significant step to appease global regulators. this would help to bring more transparency and security in the cryptocurrency space.

Founded in 2013, Bitmain designs application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips along with manufacturing cryptocurrency miners. In addition to dominating the crypto mining hardware market, the company also controls two largest mining pools – BTC.com and Antpool, both accounting for more than 40% of the globe’s bitcoin mining power.

Currently, Bitmain holds its offices in different cities like Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Qingdao, Chengdu, Shanghai and Shenzhen. While unveiling further plans of the company’s expansion in coming years, Wu said that Bitmain would add an additional number of Bitcoin miners and would also venture into other alternate and emerging technology areas like Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Last month in May 2018, Bitmain led a $110 million Series E funding round for the U.S-based cryptocurrency firm Circle. Circle is a rapidly growing and upcoming startup in the cryptocurrency space providing different services like cryptocurrency trading exchange, a retail-focused brokerage app, an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk, and is also planning to build a U.S Dollar-pegged “stablecoin”.

In addition to mining Bitcoin miners, Bitmain also plans to launch the ASIC chips Antminer E3 for mining Ethereum tokens, in the coming month of July. Earlier this year in April 2018, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland wrote: “During our travels through Asia last week, we confirmed that Bitmain has already developed an ASIC [application-specific integrated circuit] for mining Ethereum, and is readying the supply chain for shipments in [Q2 2018].”

Following Bitmain’s footsteps of launching an IPO, China’s second-largest Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer Canaan Inc is planning to launch an IPO. In the last two years between 2015 and 2017, when Bitcoin mining activities reached its peak, Canaan witnessed an unprecedented growth in its revenues and gross profits.

Bitcoin News, Business News, Cryptocurrency News, IPO News, News
Related Articles