S&P Global, the leading financial information services company, has agreed to acquire blockchain security company OpenZeppelin for an amount that has yet to be disclosed.

 

According to an S&P press release, the acquisition is aimed at complementing the company’s global risk assessment and ecosystem development capabilities in the digital asset market. 

 

The deal will also enable S&P Global to create the next generation of on chain security assessments and benchmarks while delivering essential intelligence, especially as the capital market moves on chain.

 

 

"Our digital assets strategy centers on bringing trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment to markets as they move on chain," said Yann Le Pallec, President of S&P Global Ratings.

 

"As digital assets and tokenized markets continue to mature, OpenZeppelin's technology and expertise will complement our smart contract and on-chain technology risk assessment capabilities, giving traditional financial institutions and DeFi native companies alike the confidence to build and transact in this new environment."

 

Although the terms of the transaction have yet to be disclosed and the deal remains subject to closing conditions, OpenZeppelin will continue to operate under the OpenZeppelin name, with its CEO, Demian Brener, leading the company.

 

About OpenZeppelin

 

Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin is a leading blockchain security firm that promotes secure development practices for teams aiming to build safely and securely on-chain.

 

Prior to this acquisition deal with S&P Global, OpenZeppelin had achieved several milestones, including launching OpenZeppelin Contracts, the first major open-source smart contracts library that eventually became the de facto industry standard for secure smart contracts.

 

The firm also pioneered professional smart contract security audits, which audited over $37 trillion in cumulative value, while also conducting over 900 security audits that identified more than 10,000 vulnerabilities.

 

OpenZeppelin powers 9 of the top 10 stablecoins, including Circle USDC, Ripple RLUSD, PayPal USD (PYUSD), Ethena USDe, BitGo USD1, and 10 of the top 10 tokenized funds, including BlackRock BUIDL, Centrifuge Anemoy JTRSY, Circle USYC, and Ondo OUSG and USDY.

Kaiko, a digital asset and analytics company, has secured $110 million in funding in an extended Series B round that initially raised $53 million around May or June 2022.

 

The round, which was led by S&P Global, also involved several investors, including Alura Capital, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, Canton Foundation, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, among others.

 

 

Announcing the funding round in a press release, Kaiko said the funds raised will be used to strengthen its institutional grade market data business for digital assets and expand its data infrastructure offering for on chain and tokenized capital markets.

 

“The investors in this strategic round work across the core functions of digital asset markets: pricing, trading, capital allocation, and blockchain development. They are backing both the company Kaiko has built and our vision to provide the data infrastructure layer for on chain capital markets,” said Ambre Soubiran, CEO of Kaiko.

 

Kaiko’s $110 million funding comes at a time when the company recently closed two major acquisitions: Cometh, a European MiCA and CASP licensed provider of regulated DeFi infrastructure, which it acquired in May, and Amberdata, a digital asset data and analytics provider it acquired in June.

 

Like Kaiko, several other crypto companies have received funding from investors recently. Notable among these is TRM Labs, which recently completed a Series C round that saw the blockchain intelligence and analytics company reach a valuation of $2 billion, although the amount raised remains undisclosed.