Magic Raises A $27M Series A To Become The Passport Of The Internet
The present-day Internet is monopolized by a few Big Tech companies that we’ve come to rely on daily as we browse online. The incentives surrounding users and these large technology firms are now misaligned. Sean Li (CEO), Arthur Jen (CTO) and Jaemin Jin (Chief Blockchain Officer) came together as three cofounders to create Magic, a tool to “integrating unstoppable passwordless authentication” seamlessly into one’s modern tech stack.
The San Francisco-based startup has raised a $27M Series A (for a total of $31M raised) from lead investor Northzone, Tiger Global, Volt Capital, Digital Currency Group, CoinFund, and previous seed round investors Placeholder, Cherubic Ventures, SV Angel, Naval Ravikant, Guillermo Rauch. In addition, several notable angels are participating, including (but not limited to): Alexis Ohanian (Co-founder of Reddit, Initialized Capital), Balaji Srinivasan ( Ex-CTO at Coinbase, Co-founder of Earn.com), Ben Pruess (President at Tommy Hilfiger, Ex-VP at Adidas), Casey Neistat (YouTuber w/ 12M subscribers), Guillermo Rauch ( CEO of Vercel & Next.js), Jacob Jaber (CEO of Philz Coffee), Jason Warner ( CTO of Github), Kayvon Beykpour ( Head of Consumer Product Twitter, Founder Periscope), Naval Ravikant (Co-founder of AngelList), Roham Gharegozlou (CEO of Dapper Labs), Ryan Hoover ( Founder of Product Hunt, Weekend Fund), Sahil Lavingia ( CEO of Gumroad), Scott Belsky (CPO of Adobe, Author of “The Messy Middle”), Soona Amhaz ( General Partner at Volt Capital / TokenDaily), Varsha Rao (CEO at Nurx, Ex-COO of Clover Health, Ex-Head of Global Ops at Airbnb).
Prolific angel investor Naval Ravikant says, “Magic points the way towards a world in which user identity and authentication is decentralized and not subject to control by the tech giants.”
