Exclusive: Crypto risk analytics startup Agio Ratings raises $4.6M

Agio Ratings, a Moody's-like analyst for the crypto world, has raised $4.6 million in two rounds of funding, the company tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: Market makers, brokers and lenders in the digital asset ecosystem need an independent measure of crypto counterparty risk.

How it works: Agio analyzes both on-chain and off-chain data sources to rate the possibility that various crypto trading platforms could default.

• It then makes those ratings available on a subscription basis to market makers, lenders, and anyone else in the digital asset world who wants to price counterparty risk.

Behind the scenes: The company, which was founded in 2022, began by assembling a training data set from the 25 default events in the crypto ecosystem over the past two years.

• "We assembled over 1,000 variables, ran them through the model and found that nine are predictive of default," Agio Ratings CEO Ana De Sousa says. "We feel very confident now in the outputs of that model."

State of play: Agio has ratings on 32 crypto firms currently, but plans to expand its coverage to more than 70 by April.

• In addition to the crypto exchanges it has independently rated, De Sousa says the company has received inbound interest from lenders and brokers who want to be vetted and are willing to share proprietary financial information with Agio.
• "A lot of firms felt like they were good risks compared to their peers, but they had no reputable, independent way of showcasing that," she says.

Zoom in: The company's two rounds were a $3.2 million seed round in October 2023, and a $1.35 million pre-seed in May 2022.

• Superscrypt led the seed round, with participation from Portage, MS&AD Ventures and several angels in insurance and asset management.

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