A16z Leads $9M Funding Round for Solana’s Phantom Wallet

Phantom, a digital wallet that’s on the Solana blockchain network, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding found led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Other participating investors included Variant Fund, Jump Capital, DeFi Alliance, the Solana Foundation and Coinbase investor Garry Tan.

The funding will be used to expand the Phantom staff, develop new platform features and expand to other blockchains, the firm said.

Phantom was founded by software engineers Brandon Millman and Francesco Agosti and product designer Chris Kalani. Since releasing its product in April for testing, Phantom has added 40,000 users and secured $500,000 in grants from Serum and Solana.

“With the world moving into a multi-chain future, the strong interest from the participants in our beta group indicates that our team has designed a DeFi wallet for the masses, one that’s in a unique position to provide value to users unlike any other related product on the market,” Millman said.

Most recently Phantom integrated with FTX Pay, which allows users to transfer SOL, USDC and USDT directly from FTX.

Other notable investors in the funding round included Compound Finance, crypto derivatives trading platform dYdX, music streaming platform Audius, bitcoin rewards app Lolli and the Ethereum Foundation.