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- Valora, a Celo-powered crypto wallet has finished a $20 million investment round and announced its separation from Celo
- Jackie Bona, the previous head of Celo’s cLabs cLabs’ consumer growth, will take over as Valora’s new CEO
- Valora plans to utilize the funding to build new products and generate educational content to help individuals get more comfortable with cryptocurrency
Valora, a Celo-native mobile digital wallet, raised $20 million in a Series A round sponsored by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a significant Celo backer. Valora also announced that it will operate as a separate, standalone company from cLabs, one of the groups behind the mobile-first, open-source Celo ecosystem, in a statement posted Tuesday. Valora’s CEO will be Jackie Bona, who was previously the head of consumer growth at cLabs. Marek Olszewski, a co-founder of Celo, will serve as president. Valora’s chief technology officer will be Silas Boyd-Wickizer.
VALORA to operate as an independent company
Celo, an open-source blockchain ecosystem focused on making decentralized financial (DeFi) systems and tools accessible to anyone with a smartphone, announced today that Valora, a mobile-first digital wallet native to the Celo platform that allows you to save, send, and spend crypto as easily as texting, will operate as a separate company. The announcement comes on the heels of a $20 million Series A financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, SV Angel, Nima Capital, NFX, and Valor Capital, among others. Jackie Bona, who most recently worked as the Head of Consumer Growth at cLabs, Inc. (cLabs), will take over as CEO of Valora as a separate company.
Valora has had strong growth since its public introduction in February 2021. Valora now has over 200K customers with a balance, as well as 53K monthly active users in over 100 countries that use the app to pay, move money internationally, and save. He is grateful that cLabs was able to assist Valora in becoming what it is today. Valora will continue to be an important part of the Celo ecosystem, according to Rene Reinsberg, co-founder of cLabs. Valora’s rapid expansion in such a short period of time is truly astounding, and he is more certain than ever that the company will thrive as an independent entity under Jackie Bona’s leadership.
VALORA is ready for the challenges ahead
Valora solves long-standing difficulties in the crypto industry by combining the power of Celo’s blockchain with an easy user experience. Valora makes crypto accessible to real people all over the world by fully utilizing Celo’s unique capabilities, allowing them to: Send payments to nearly any cell phone number in the world (replacing the 42-character-long public key) Use any smartphone, even if internet access is limited (eliminating the reliance on a computer, the latest iPhone, or high-speed internet)
No other encryption application comes close to this level of simplicity. Anyone new to crypto and DeFi can participate in this burgeoning ecosystem thanks to Valora’s unique technology and user-friendly interface. Valora plans to use the newly raised cash to improve its user-friendly product and create educational content to help more people become comfortable with cryptocurrencies as a better method to store, send, and spend money.
Valora is addressing many of the issues that have stymied the widespread adoption of crypto and DeFi. It’s on its way to becoming the world’s crypto gateway Arianna Simpson, a16z crypto’s General Partner stated as crypto becomes more mainstream and scales around the world, they look forward to continuing to work with Valora’s great team.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
