The raise doubles Elliptic's largest previous round, a $60 million Series C closed in October 2021, led by Evolution Equity Partners, with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and J.P. Morgan as co-investors.

Total funding now stands at roughly $240 million. Elliptic currently screens more than one billion transactions per week across 65+ blockchains for over 700 clients in 30 countries, according to the company. Those clients collectively account for roughly two-thirds of global crypto trading volume, according to figures the company cites, as reported by CoinDesk.

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Why the Timing Matters

The fundraise lands against a backdrop of sharply rising illicit activity on crypto networks. According to Chainalysis's 2026 Crypto Crime Report, illicit crypto flows reached approximately $154 to $158 billion in 2025, a 162 percent increase from $64 billion the prior year. Crypto money laundering alone accounted for around $82 billion. The February 2025 hack of exchange Bybit, the largest crypto theft on record at $1.46 billion, represented more than half of all funds stolen in hacks across the entire year. Total losses from roughly 150 hacks and exploits in 2025 came to approximately $2.87 billion.

Stablecoin networks, meanwhile, processed around $33 trillion in transactions during the same period, a scale that illustrates the compliance burden facing institutions active in digital assets.

CEO Simone Maini said the company plans to build what she described as "agentic" AI products: autonomous tools trained on Elliptic's proprietary dataset that can handle tasks currently requiring manual analyst work. "Financial systems are being rebuilt on-chain," Maini said in the company's press release. "The institutions leading that transition need an on-chain analytics partner that matches their scale, sophistication, and ambition."

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Strategic Investors Signal Broader Industry Shift

The participation of Deutsche Bank and Nasdaq is not incidental. Deutsche Bank is preparing to launch a crypto custody platform in 2026, built in partnership with Bitpanda's technology unit, and its DWS asset management arm has already launched a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin through the AllUnity initiative.

The British Business Bank's involvement carries its own strategic significance. As a UK government-backed institution, its participation reflects support for positioning London-headquartered compliance firms as global standards-setters in the post-Brexit era. "Elliptic has cemented its status as a global leader, screening over 1 billion transactions weekly for 700+ customers in 30 countries," said Charlotte Lawrence of the British Business Bank.

Humbert de Liedekerke Beaufort of One Peak, the round's lead investor, framed Elliptic's role in systemic terms. "Elliptic is the essential infrastructure for how stablecoins and tokenized assets move through the global financial system," he said.

Investing in compliance infrastructure is a logical prerequisite for any institution operating digital asset services at scale. "Strong, institutional-grade risk and compliance foundations are critical to supporting responsible digital asset development," said Sabih Behzad of Deutsche Bank in the announcement.

Nasdaq Ventures brings a different angle. The exchange operator already provides market surveillance services to crypto exchanges and lists crypto ETFs. Its backing of Elliptic reflects a view that blockchain analytics is becoming core market infrastructure rather than a niche add-on. "As digital assets become embedded in global finance, institutions need trusted infrastructure to manage compliance and risk at scale," said Gary Offner of Nasdaq Ventures.

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Regional Stakes: South Asia and Africa

For markets outside the United States and Europe, the implications of this round are direct and practical.

In India, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND) issued updated AML/CFT guidelines in January 2026 that require all registered virtual digital asset service providers to use blockchain analytics tools for transaction monitoring. The guidelines effectively mandate the kind of services Elliptic and its competitors sell. Forty-nine Indian exchanges have completed FIU registration as of early 2026, comprising 45 domestic platforms and 4 offshore exchanges, a breakdown that confirms international platforms operating in India are also captured under FIU oversight.

The regulator imposed 28 crore rupees (roughly $3.4 million) in penalties on non-compliant platforms during the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year. Elliptic is among the platforms specifically named in Indian regulatory guidance as suitable for PMLA compliance.

Africa presents a different picture. Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52 percent year-over-year jump, with Nigeria and Ethiopia both placing in the top 15 of the 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Regulatory frameworks are catching up. Nigeria passed the Investments and Securities Act in March 2025, formally recognising digital assets as securities. Kenya legislated a formal licensing framework for virtual asset service providers and, through the Finance Act 2025, replaced a controversial 3 percent digital asset tax with a 10 percent excise duty on transaction fees, reflecting a broader recalibration of the country's crypto policy. South Africa moved to enforce Travel Rule compliance for exchanges.

Each of these developments creates direct demand for the screening and investigation tools Elliptic provides. A practical concern remains: Elliptic's enterprise pricing structure may be out of reach for smaller African exchanges, leaving space for regional competitors or open-source alternatives to fill the gap.

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What Comes Next

The combined blockchain analytics market is valued at approximately $1.4 billion annually, with Elliptic, Chainalysis, and TRM Labs among the leading commercial players in that space.

Elliptic's plan to automate compliance workflows with AI agents raises questions about how regional exchanges will staff their compliance teams over time, as efficiency gains from automation are weighed against the capacity needs of growing markets.

For developers building on institutional DeFi rails, the involvement of Deutsche Bank and Nasdaq in this round suggests that Elliptic API integration could become a baseline requirement for enterprise partnerships sooner than many expect.

The compliance infrastructure layer, long treated as overhead, is now attracting the same capital as the trading platforms it serves.