Startup profile · funding coverage
Arweave funding, valuation and investors
Permanent decentralized data storage protocol — pay once, store forever on the permaweb.
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Funding, valuation & investors
Answer-first snapshotLatest funding
Follow-on
$8.3M · March 2020
Latest known valuation
Not publicly disclosed
Total disclosed equity funding
$8.3M
Excludes debt, grants, acquisitions, secondaries, and IPO proceeds.
Current status
private
growth · London, United Kingdom
Investors in latest funding
Other: Andreessen Horowitz , Union Square Ventures
Overview
Arweave is a decentralized storage network using a blockweave data structure that lets users pay once to store data permanently. The permaweb built on Arweave hosts permanent websites, archives, NFT metadata, and on-chain data that cannot be deleted or censored. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London, Arweave raised venture backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Multicoin Capital across 2019–2020 token sales and follow-on rounds.
Why Arweave is interesting
Novel blockweave economics for permanent storage — early a16z crypto bet powering uncensorable web archives, on-chain data, and permaweb hosting.
Product & use cases
Arweave provides permanent decentralized storage via its blockweave protocol — users pay an upfront endowment to store data forever, enabling the permaweb for uncensorable websites and on-chain archives.
- Permanent web hosting and archival on the permaweb
- On-chain NFT metadata and blockchain application data storage
- Censorship-resistant document and media preservation
Key facts
- Token sale (2019): $5M from a16z, Union Square Ventures, Multicoin (CoinDesk)
- Follow-on (2020): $8.3M from a16z, USV, Coinbase Ventures (Arweave blog)
- Product: blockweave permanent storage; permaweb for uncensorable web hosting
- Co-investors not in VCT directory: Coinbase Ventures
Funding history (newest first)
Follow-on
2020-03 $8.3MSource: https://globalventuring.com/blog/2020/03/06/cvc-deal-net-2-6-march-2020/
Investors in our directory
Funds linked from Arweave's profile — open a fund page for stage focus and related deal articles.
Competitive landscape
Edge: Pay-once-store-forever economics vs. recurring cloud storage — differentiated permanence guarantee via blockweave endowment model.
Decentralized storage splits between recurring models (Filecoin, Storj) and Arweave's permanent endowment approach. Permanence is compelling for archives and on-chain data but upfront costs and ecosystem tooling lag centralized cloud. a16z, USV, and Multicoin backing validated the thesis early; adoption depends on permaweb developer experience vs. IPFS defaults.
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Filecoin direct
Decentralized storage network; recurring/sealed storage model vs. Arweave permanence.
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IPFS + Pinning services adjacent
Content-addressed storage requires ongoing pinning; not permanent by default.
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AWS S3 / Google Cloud Storage incumbent
Centralized recurring storage; no permanence guarantee.
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Storj direct
Decentralized cloud storage; different tokenomics and permanence model.
Notable stories
- Arweave's blockweave design endows storage miners upfront so data persists without recurring fees — a novel economic model vs. Filecoin (Arweave yellow paper).
- a16z and Union Square Ventures backed Arweave early alongside Multicoin, validating permanent storage as crypto infrastructure (CoinDesk, 2019).
- The permaweb hosts permanent websites and on-chain archives that cannot be deleted — used by Web3 apps for metadata and censorship-resistant publishing.
Industries
Related funding articles
Venture Capital Tracker pieces that cover Arweave's financing or category context.
FAQs about Arweave
Practical answers founders, operators, and investors typically search for.
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