The world’s largest mining company has set up shop in Silicon Valley. Bitmain has opened an office in the famous California technological hub in anticipation of its initial public offering (IPO), planned for later this year.
According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Bitmain, the cryptocurrency mining hardware company out of China, has moved into a 20,000-square-foot facility in downtown San Jose. It was the last vacant space of the Riverpark Towers office complex, a hub for tech startups such as Cohesity, WeWork and Okta.
With a recent valuation of $12 billion, the move into Silicon Valley is not surprising. Bitmain is banking on the high degree of technological innovation spawned in the area, as well as contacts from companies such as Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Apple, Agilent and more. The company is now one of the world’s most valuable private tech startups and the firm anticipates reaching a valuation of as much as $40 billion once the company launches its IPO.
Bitmain has been on a directed quest to expand across North America. The move is driven by an uncertain future for the crypto mining industry in China and a growing interest in the activity in both the U.S. and Canada. The company has recently opened mining centers in Quebec, as well as in Washington state.
Bitmain is behind several cryptocurrency-related companies. It led a $110-million funding round for Circle in May and has put $50 million into the Opera web browser, which just recently announced a new mobile browser with a built-in cryptocurrency wallet.
Additionally, Bitmain, alongside PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard, announced its participation in a funding round for blockchain startup Block.one that ended this past Monday. Block.one, the creator of EOS, didn’t reveal how much money was collected during the round, but, given the deep pockets of the aforementioned investors, it more than likely was a sizeable amount.
Bitmain recently completed a Series B funding round, which saw the mining company attract $400 million. Funding was provided by an international assortment of investment firms, including U.S.-based Sequoia Capital’s Chinese subsidiary Sequoia China, Singapore’s EDBI governmental investment fund and the U.S.-based Coatue hedge fund.
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