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Crypto funding history: 3 searches found $156.5M in 3 rounds

By NAUT Research · · 9 min read

$156.5M Funding history across Celestia's 3 dated rounds on NAUT, found in 3 searches, read 4 November 2026. Logos: Celestia, Bain Capital Crypto, Maven 11 Capital, Placeholder Ventures, Binance Labs, Jump Crypto, Blockchain Capital, Delphi Digital, Mustafa Al-Bassam.

A full crypto funding history takes 3 searches on NAUT: open the company record and read every funding row, open each backer's investor page to see who came back for a second round, then open the company's people rows to find the person who can answer you. Worked on Celestia with NAUT's data read on 4 November 2026, those 3 searches return 3 dated rounds worth $156.5M between 3 March 2021 and 23 September 2024, 26 distinct backers across them, and 11 named people at the company.

Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 4 November 2026, read-only. Celestia's record carries 6 investment rows. The 3 used here each carry an announcement date, an amount and a backer list. The other 3 carry an amount but no date, and 2 of them read as tranches of the dated 2022 raise, so adding all 6 amounts would count the same money twice. Their amounts are excluded from every number in this article, though their backer lists add 7 firms and angels that no dated round names. Both points are set out in the section on where the record falls short. 5 claims about these rounds went to outside sources: 2 of the 3 dated amounts came back confirmed with the quote found on the page, and the 2022 round's outside check did not come back clean, so its amount and its label here are NAUT's own record. Founder names and titles come from NAUT's people rows for Celestia. NAUT Research wrote it.

How do you find a crypto company funding history?

Run these 3 searches in order. Each one answers a different question a deal maker actually has, and the second and third only work because the first produced names.

  • Search 1, the company record. Every funding row with its round label, date, amount and backers, on 1 page.
  • Search 2, the backers. Each firm's own NAUT page, to see which backers repeat across the rounds and what else they fund.
  • Search 3, the people. The company's own people rows, so the history ends in a name you can write to.
The 3 searches, in order
  1. Open the company recordCelestia carries 6 investment rows, 3 of them dated, worth $156.5M.
  2. Filter to the dated rowsA row with no announcement date repeats money already counted, so it stays out of the total.
  3. Open each backerMaven 11 Capital and Placeholder Ventures each appear in 2 of the 3 dated rounds.
  4. Open the people rowsNAUT names 11 people at Celestia, including its 3 co-founders.

Search 1: the company record, where a crypto funding history starts

Open the company on NAUT and read the funding rows top to bottom. Celestia's 3 dated rounds, oldest first:

Round, NAUT's label Date Amount Backers
Seed Round 3 March 2021 $1.5M 14
Series A 19 October 2022 $55M 9
Funding Round 23 September 2024 $100M 5

No backer is flagged as the lead on any of the 3 rows. The 2021 and 2024 amounts both come back confirmed on Celestia's own blog; the 2022 amount's outside check did not come back clean, so it stands here as NAUT's own record.

Ranked by amount, the 2024 round is the largest of the 3 at $100M, which is 63.9% of the $156.5M total, and the seed round at $1.5M is 1.0% of it. The pattern a founder should read off this table is the gap between rounds: 19 months from seed to the 2022 raise, then 23 months to the 2024 raise, and a round size that went up roughly 37 times and then roughly 2 times.

The round labels are the ones NAUT stores, and they are worth reading as labels rather than as facts about a company's stage. The 2024 row is stored as "Funding Round" with no series letter on it. Celestia's own announcement of that raise calls it a $100M raise "led by Bain Capital Crypto", with no series letter either.

What does Celestia's crypto funding history show?

3 rounds, $156.5M, and a backer list that grows narrower as the cheques get bigger. 14 backers are on NAUT's record for the $1.5M seed, 9 for the $55M round and 5 for the $100M round.

Seed Round, 3 March 2021, $1.5M. 14 backers on NAUT's record: Maven 11 Capital, KR1, Divergence Ventures, Signature Ventures, Simon Johnson, P2P Capital, Dokia Capital, Cryptium Labs, Interchain Foundation, Tokenomy, Binance Labs, Ramsey Khoury, Michael Ng and Michael Youssefmir. Celestia's own post on the round says the company "has closed a $1.5m strategic seed fundraise".

Series A, 19 October 2022, $55M. 9 backers on NAUT's record: Maven 11 Capital, Blockchain Capital, Delphi Digital, Placeholder Ventures, Figment Capital, NFX, Galaxy Digital (Ventures), Jump Crypto and The Spartan Group.

Funding Round, 23 September 2024, $100M. 5 backers on NAUT's record: Placeholder Ventures, Robot Ventures, 1kx, Syncracy Capital and Bain Capital Crypto. Celestia's own announcement says the Celestia Foundation raised the round "led by Bain Capital Crypto".

Search 2: the backers, and which ones came back

The backer list is the half of a funding history most people skip, and it is the half that tells you who to call. Open each firm's NAUT page from the round row and 2 things fall out.

First, repeat backers. On NAUT's record for these 3 rounds, Maven 11 Capital is in the seed and the 2022 round, and Placeholder Ventures is in the 2022 round and the 2024 round. No firm on NAUT's record for Celestia is in all 3. A firm that doubled down is the one with conviction and the one whose partner will take a call about the company.

Second, a working investor list for your own raise. 26 investor pages sit behind these 3 rounds, and each one carries that firm's other rounds. Those 26 pages are also a way into the wider list of crypto investors funding this category, because each page carries the crypto funding rounds that firm has backed. A founder building a modular infrastructure target list can take the 5 names from the 2024 round and work outward, because those are the firms writing the late cheques in this category.

Search 3: the people, so the history ends in a name

NAUT names 11 people at Celestia, 3 of them co-founders: Mustafa Al-Bassam as Co-Founder and CEO, Ismail Khoffi as Co-Founder and CTO, and John Adler as Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer. The other 8 rows cover a COO, a Head of Research, a Head of Marketing and Communications, a Product Team Lead, a Founding Engineer, a developer relations lead and 2 community managers.

That spread matters for who you write to. A partnership or an integration goes to the product or developer relations row rather than to a co-founder. A funding conversation goes to the co-founders, and the funding history gives you the opening line, because you can name the round, the month and the firm that led it.

Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.

What this tells a BD team and a founder raising

  • A 3-round history with rising amounts and a shrinking backer list is a company with money and a short list of people to convince. Celestia's $100M round closed with 5 backers on NAUT's record.
  • The month of the last round is your timing signal. Celestia's most recent dated round closed 23 September 2024, which is the number to check before you pitch anything that needs new budget.
  • Repeat backers are warm paths. 2 firms are in 2 of Celestia's 3 dated rounds, and a shared backer is the cleanest introduction you can ask for.
  • Read the round label, then read the source. NAUT stores the 2024 round as "Funding Round", and the company's own post names Bain Capital Crypto as leading it.
  • Count only dated rows. 3 of the 6 investment rows on Celestia's record carry no date and repeat backers already counted, so a total built from all 6 is wrong.
How a BD team works 1 funding history
  1. Take the last dateCelestia's most recent dated round closed 23 September 2024 at $100M.
  2. Take the repeat backersMaven 11 Capital and Placeholder Ventures each sit in 2 of the 3 dated rounds.
  3. Pick the role, not the founderNAUT names 11 people at Celestia, 3 of them co-founders and 8 in other roles.
  4. Open 1 channelVerified Telegram, email and LinkedIn sit on the person's NAUT page on any paid plan.

Where NAUT's record falls short

2 gaps are worth naming, because you will hit both on other companies.

The first is undated rows. Celestia's record carries 3 rows with an amount and no announcement date, labelled "IFO on Bybit Launchpool", "Private A Round" and "Private B Round". Their amounts are left out of every number here, because the 2 "Private" rows read as tranches of the dated 2022 raise rather than as extra money: CoinDesk's report of that 19 October 2022 round calls it a combined Series A and B led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital. The backer lists are a different story. They are not copies of the dated rows: between them the 2 "Private" rows name Polychain Capital, Coinbase Ventures, FTX Ventures, Protocol Labs and 3 more backers that appear in none of the 3 dated rounds. Polychain Capital is the one to notice, because it is a reported co-lead of the 2022 round and neither it nor Bain Capital Crypto sits in the dated "Series A" row's 9 backers. So that row is short on backers as well as short on a lead flag. The fix on any company page is the same: sort by date, then read the undated rows for names the dated rows missed.

The second is the lead flag. None of Celestia's 3 dated rounds has a backer flagged as the lead on NAUT's record, while each round names between 5 and 14 backers. For the 2024 round the company's own announcement names the lead, so the lead exists and the stored flag is empty. Treat an empty lead flag as a question to take to the source, never as proof that a round had no lead.

Related reading on NAUT: How to find the lead investor: 3 ways, tested on 20 rounds and Crypto co-investors: 3 steps, 168 on 66 rounds for 1 fund.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes, and the same 3 searches are 2 calls. GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/celestia returns the company with its team, and GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/bain-capital-crypto returns a fund with its team and its portfolio, where each row carries the company, roundType, amountUsd, announceDate and isLead. Each data call costs 5 credits, plans start at Essential $49 a month for 3,000 credits, and the key goes in an Authorization: Bearer $NAUT_KEY header: see the API docs and pricing. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on those records unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need the contact channels as well as the rounds.

Crypto funding history FAQ

How do you find a crypto company funding history?

Open the company on NAUT, read every funding row, then keep only the rows with an announcement date. On Celestia's record, read on 4 November 2026, that leaves 3 rounds worth $156.5M: $1.5M on 3 March 2021, $55M on 19 October 2022 and $100M on 23 September 2024.

How much has Celestia raised?

NAUT's data shows 3 dated rounds totalling $156.5M, between 3 March 2021 and 23 September 2024. 3 further rows on the record carry an amount but no date and repeat backers from the dated rounds, so they are not added to that total.

Who backed Celestia, and did any investor back more than 1 round?

NAUT's record names 14 backers on the $1.5M seed, 9 on the $55M 2022 round and 5 on the $100M 2024 round. Maven 11 Capital is in the seed and the 2022 round and Placeholder Ventures is in the 2022 and 2024 rounds, and no firm on NAUT's record for Celestia is in all 3.

Which NAUT pages give me a company's rounds, its backers and its people?

The company page (Celestia here) carries the funding rows, each backer links to its own investor page, and the same company page carries the people rows: 11 for Celestia, including 3 co-founders. The same data comes back from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/projects/celestia at 5 credits a call, and verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for those people unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial to open the channels.

Does a funding row with no date mean the round did not happen?

No. It means NAUT has no announcement date stored for it, and on Celestia 3 such rows look like tranches of money already counted in the dated rounds, so their amounts are excluded here. Their backer lists are not excluded from your reading: 2 of those rows add 7 backers that no dated round names. Check an undated row against the company's own announcements before you count its money.

Sources

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