Bitfury

Bitfury is a Bitcoin company in the Mining Hardware category, founded in 2011 by Valery Vavilov, George Kikvadze.

The Idea

Vertically integrated Bitcoin infrastructure, designing its own ASIC chips, manufacturing miners, and operating industrial-scale data centers. The bet was that Bitcoin's security layer would require purpose-built silicon and institutional-grade operations, not hobbyist rigs.

Early Traction

Started out in 2011 mining Bitcoin itself on CPUs and GPUs off roughly $110K of its own capital, then plowed the proceeds into custom silicon. By 2013 Bitfury had designed and shipped its own 55nm ASIC, among the first purpose-built mining chips in the world, and ran it in its own operations rather than selling to hobbyists, riding Bitcoin's climb from $100 to over $1,000 that November.

Peak Stats

Raised roughly $80M at about a $1B valuation in its 2018 round, with lifetime funding north of $170M.

Status Today

Active. Bitfury has retrenched from the flashy growth story, with much of its value migrating to spinouts most notably Cipher Mining (NASDAQ: CIFR), which took the US mining operations public via SPAC in 2021.