Elliptic raises $120 million backed by Nasdaq, Deutsche Bank as AI reshapes crypto security

Elliptic raises $120 million backed by Nasdaq, Deutsche Bank as AI reshapes crypto security

The crypto analytics firm plans to expand its AI-powered monitoring tools as stablecoins and tokenized finance grow rapidly, CEO Simone Maini said.

Updated May 12, 2026, 2:23 p.m. Published May 12, 2026, 1:30 p.m. 2 min read

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Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said it raised $120 million in fresh funding from investors including Nasdaq Ventures and Deutsche Bank as financial institutions ramp up spending on crypto compliance and security infrastructure.

The fundraising round, led by growth equity firm One Peak, values the London-based company at $610 million, according to a Tuesday press release. The British Business Bank also participated.

The investment comes as crypto markets face a wave of security breaches and exploits that have exposed weaknesses in both decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and centralized platforms. Hackers have stolen nearly $3 billion in crypto assets since the beginning of 2025 through smart contract exploits, phishing attacks and cross-chain bridge breaches, and regulators are pushing exchanges and banks to tighten anti-money laundering controls.

As a result, blockchain analytics firms have become critical infrastructure providers for institutions entering the digital asset industry. Elliptic’s software tracks crypto transactions across dozens of blockchains and flags wallets linked to sanctions, fraud, ransomware or illicit finance.

Banks, exchanges and government agencies use these tools to monitor transactions and comply with financial crime rules. The company said two-thirds of global crypto trading volume flows through exchanges that already use its services.

Demand for those systems has accelerated alongside the growth of stablecoins and tokenized assets, which are increasingly moving into mainstream finance. Stablecoins accounted for roughly $33 trillion in transactions last year, according to the company.

Large financial firms are also exploring tokenized securities and blockchain-based settlement systems, raising the stakes for compliance providers that can monitor activity across public blockchains in real time. At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) tools are making attacks cheaper and faster, forcing a rethink of how crypto systems stay secure.

Elliptic said the new funding will be used to expand its AI-driven monitoring and risk analysis tools as institutional adoption of digital assets grows.

"One of the things that we will be accelerating with the funding is our agentic product roadmap," CEO Simone Maini told CoinDesk. "What that means is building and launching agents that sit on top of Elliptic's dataset to be able to automate a lot of what is otherwise highly manual, repetitive tasks performed by compliance analysts.

"That means those that that those precious resources can be redeployed to deep diving and investigating financial crime where they need to," she said.

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