We are excited to lead Messari’s $35mm Series B round and deepen our partnership with Ryan Selkis and the Messari team. Over the last 4+ years, Messari has become a trusted source for crypto data, research, and asset intelligence, and we look forward to leveraging our team’s connectivity across the crypto and TradFi ecosystems to help further accelerate the company’s impressive growth. Brevan Howard Digital is already an active user of Messari and has experienced first-hand the extensive value of their platform.

Our Investment Thesis

In our view, the value of Messari’s platform is demonstrated through its broad customer base, which already includes many of the top protocols, crypto companies, and largest financial institutions in the world. We believe Messari will continue to capitalize on this foundation as they evolve their product offering driven by new customer demands and regulatory tailwinds. Specifically, our investment thesis for Messari is grounded in the following observations:

• Messari has demonstrated clear product-market fit by delivering robust growth and strong customer metrics while also being capital efficient and cash flow positive

• Large institutions are just beginning to enter the space. Their understanding and on-chain activity is currently limited, but will grow with time. Messari is perfectly positioned to meet the demand coming from this market segment

• As institutions enter the space, they will need well thought out research and expect information in a standardized and structured form (similar to a 10-K). Messari has built and automated these products across a few of their core businesses

• Over the next few years, we anticipate regulation and standards around protocol reporting by various stakeholders to only increase. Messari has the products that meet this need and will be central to that paradigm shift

• Given their product market fit and strong financial position, the team has already begun to consolidate their position in the market through various acquisitions such as Dove to seek to continue to strengthen and diversify their offering

• The Messari team is building a governance platform that will provide institutional grade transparency and reporting. We believe this is critical to drive engagement and bolster decentralized decision making

During our analysis we spoke with a number of customers of Messari who highlighted the team’s ability to quickly iterate on new products, willingness to uphold the principles that crypto was built on, and position as a key part of infrastructure. Further validating the points above, we are pleased to invest alongside many other TradFi, Fintech, and crypto investors.

Moving Forward

We expect Messari to continue leveraging its two-sided customer flywheel between investors / companies and the protocol communities themselves to provide transparency and build tools that democratize access to information, break down data silos, and ultimately help everyone make more informed decisions. We believe that the market opportunity for this business model is significant given anticipated growth in the crypto ecosystem and the continued inflow of institutional participants. We’re thrilled to be investors in Messari and look forward to helping them continue to provide tools unveiling information and enabling transparency for the next wave of decision-making in the data-rich crypto space.

*Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described on this page are not representative of all investments in investment funds managed by Brevan Howard and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A full list of investments that are publicly disclosed or not subject to confidentiality restrictions are available on request. This list of investments is updated periodically and as such may not reflect most recent investments. No assumptions should be made that any investments identified here were or will be profitable. It should not be assumed that recommendations in the future will be profitable or equal the performance of the company(ies) identified. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Certain information contained in this blog post constitutes “forward-looking statements,” which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “target,” “project,” “estimate,” “intend,” “continue” or “believe,” or the negatives thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. Any such estimates or projections are based upon forecasts and reflects prevailing conditions, assumptions and our best judgment as of the date of this blog post. There is no guarantee that any of these estimates, assumptions or projections will be materialized or achieved, and as a result thereof, actual results may vary from the estimates or projections. Furthermore, any such variations may be material. Nothing contained herein is, or shall be relied upon as, a promise or representation as to the past or future.