Blockchain privacy firm Auradine raises $81 million from Stanford, Marathon Digital

Privacy-focused blockchain and artificial intelligence startup Auradine has raised $81 million in Series A funding led by venture capital firms Celesta Capital and Mayfield. The company says it is developing “cutting-edge scalability, sustainability and security solutions.”

Bitcoin mining company Marathon Digital Holdings also invested in Auradine’s Series A, along with Stanford University, Cota Capital and DCVC. Based in Santa Clara, California, the company has more than 40 employees – including software engineers and cybersecurity experts from companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Marvell, Intel, Google and Wells Fargo.

“The team has an ongoing track record of delivering market-leading products that have generated over $10 billion in revenue at multi-billion dollar infrastructure companies and unicorns,” according to the Auradine website.

“Our first product is going to be a system-level solution with software and cloud management capabilities, focusing on blockchain security applications,” said Auradine co-founder and CEO Rajiv Khemani Decrypt. “These are going to be for deployment in data center environments. We will sell to large enterprises that will house them in data centers.”

Auradine expects to announce its first product this summer and will focus on serving customers in the financial and healthcare sectors, among others.

“Our long-term vision is quite broad.” Khemani added. “When you look at internet infrastructure, we think that blockchain security and privacy has a very broad area that we can target, and we will certainly have massive implications in the financial sector.”

The offices of Auradine in Santa Clara, California. Photo: Auradine

The company’s name derives from combining Aurumthe Latin word for gold, and Comforter, a unit of measurement for power. “We combined that to make it a powerhouse of gold, and the .com name was available with an ‘i’ — so that’s how the name came about,” Khemani said.

Khemani was previously co-founder and CEO of Innovium, a silicon chip maker for cloud computing companies. In 2021, semiconductor giant Marvell Technology bought Innovium for a reported $1.1 billion.

“In that company [Innovium] and a couple of other previous companies we would sell chips,” Khemani said. “I [Auradine’s] for example, we do not sell chips. We sell system-level solutions combined with software, and we will also sell cloud software as a service type.”

Celesta Capital managing partner Sriram Viswanathan and Mayfield managing director Navin Chaddha have joined Auradine’s board as part of their investment in the startup. Mayfield recently announced that they have raised the total 955 million dollars across its two VC funds.

“The Auradine team of bold entrepreneurs is building a web infrastructure platform that will enable a new era of decentralized and distributed applications,” Chaddha said in a statement. “We are excited to serve as a seed investor in their journey to leverage AI, blockchain and privacy technologies to help create an industry leader.”