Starkware
also invests · investor profileUnicorn · $8BNetanya, IL · Founded 2017 · Israel corporation · 22 known investors
StarkWare develops zero-knowledge proof and validity rollup solutions for blockchain applications, enabling secure, scalable, and trustless transactions. The company serves blockchain platforms and developers building decentralized applications.
Also known as StarkWare Industries · StarkWare Industries Ltd.
Founders & leadership
Starkware was founded in 2017 by Eli Ben-Sasson, Uri Kolodny, Alessandro Chiesa, and Michael Riabzev.
Board
Investors · 22
Also in the syndicate · 1
Reported raises · per SEC filings
Form D private placements$261.5M disclosed across 6 of 9 rounds · 2018–2022
▶$50MraisedMay 2022 · 31 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Matt HuangDirector
- Uri KolodnyExecutive Officer, Director
- Harish DevarajanDirector
- Oren KatzExecutive Officer
- Nitzan Shemer-GrossmanExecutive Officer
- Ran GrinshteinExecutive Officer
- Alessandro ChiesaExecutive Officer
- Avihu LevyExecutive Officer
- Sarit AstaExecutive Officer
- Eli Ben-SassonExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $50M
- Amount sold
- $50M
- First sale
- May 2022
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Israel, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$25MraisedDec 2021 · 18 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Alessandro ChiesaExecutive Officer
- Matt HuangDirector
- Michael RiabzevExecutive Officer
- Sarit AstaExecutive Officer
- Uri KolodnyExecutive Officer, Director
- Harish DevarajanDirector
- Oren KatzExecutive Officer
- Eli Ben-SassonExecutive Officer, Director
- Ran GrinshteinExecutive Officer
- Naomi Saar HachamExecutive Officer
- Avihu LevyExecutive Officer
- Offering amount
- $25M
- Amount sold
- $25M
- First sale
- Nov 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Israel, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$6MraisedJun 2021 · 36 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Oren KatzExecutive Officer
- Alessandro ChiesaExecutive Officer
- Ran GrinshteinExecutive Officer
- Sarit AstaExecutive Officer
- Harish DevarajanDirector
- Uri KolodnyExecutive Officer, Director
- Matt HuangDirector
- Avihu LevyExecutive Officer
- Michael RiabzevExecutive Officer
- Eli Ben-SassonExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $6M
- Amount sold
- $6M
- First sale
- Jan 2018
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Israel, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$75MraisedJun 2021 · 12 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Avihu LevyExecutive Officer
- Harish DevarajanDirector
- Michael RiabzevExecutive Officer
- Uri KolodnyExecutive Officer, Director
- Eli Ben-SassonExecutive Officer, Director
- Matt HuangDirector
- Ran GrinshteinExecutive Officer
- Alessandro ChiesaExecutive Officer
- Sarit AstaExecutive Officer
- Oren KatzExecutive Officer
- Offering amount
- $75M
- Amount sold
- $75M
- First sale
- Mar 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Israel, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$30.5MraisedJun 2021 · 33 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Ran GrinshteinExecutive Officer
- Harish DevarajanDirector
- Avihu LevyExecutive Officer
- Michael RiabzevExecutive Officer
- Sarit AstaExecutive Officer
- Oren KatzExecutive Officer
- Uri KolodnyExecutive Officer, Director
- Eli Ben-SassonExecutive Officer, Director
- Matt HuangDirector
- Alessandro ChiesaExecutive Officer
- Offering amount
- $30.5M
- Amount sold
- $30.5M
- First sale
- Sep 2018
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Israel, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$75MraisedJun 2021 · 12 investors · Other TechnologyRule 506(b)
- Harish DevarajanDirector
- Uri KolodnyExecutive Officer, Director
- Michael RiabzevExecutive Officer
- Ran GrinshteinExecutive Officer
- Matt HuangDirector
- Oren KatzExecutive Officer
- Avihu LevyExecutive Officer
- Sarit AstaExecutive Officer
- Alessandro ChiesaExecutive Officer
- Eli Ben-SassonExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $75M
- Amount sold
- $75M
- First sale
- Mar 2021
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Israel, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026StarkWare Industries is an Israeli software company specializing in cryptography, specifically STARK (Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge) proofs — a form of non-interactive zero-knowledge proof described by sources as succinct, transparent and post-quantum secure. The technology compresses computation so that thousands of transactions can be batched off the base layer of Ethereum and settled with a single proof, addressing blockchain scalability and privacy constraints. Sources state that each batch update is written to Ethereum as an approximately 80-kilobyte proof file, and that per-transaction energy consumption is reduced substantially.
The company's two principal products are StarkEx, a standalone permissioned Validity-Rollup offered as a service that supports NFT minting and trading, derivatives trading, AMMs, spot trading, payments and DeFi pooling; and Starknet, a permissionless decentralized validity rollup (ZK-rollup) on which any developer can deploy smart contracts. Both run on Cairo, a Turing-complete programming language created by StarkWare researchers and engineers for writing STARK-provable programs, with Cairo 1.0 described as a Rust-inspired upgrade. StarkWare also publishes research and open-source work through StarkWare Labs (ethSTARK, Ziggy, VeeDo) and the Stwo prover based on the Circle STARK protocol over the Mersenne prime field M31, developed with Polygon Labs. More recent work spans post-quantum migration plans for Starknet, quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction schemes, mobile-optimized proving, and privacy tooling such as STRK20 and Private KYC.
StarkWare is a private company headquartered at 32 Ha'melacha St., Netanya, Israel. Employee counts reported by sources range from 181 to 190, with directory listings placing it in the 51-200 or 201-500 bands. The management team includes Eli Ben-Sasson (co-founder, CEO/President), Lior Goldberg (CTO), Gideon Kaempfer (Chief Architect), Ran Grinshtein (CFO), Avihu Levy (Chief Product Officer / Applications GM) and Tom Brand (Starknet GM), supported by scientific advisors including Avi Wigderson, Shafi Goldwasser, Noam Nisan, Madhu Sudan, Shubhangi Saraf, Swastik Kopparty, Moni Naor, Alessandro Chiesa, Ulrich Haböck and Scott Aaronson.
Founding story
Sources date the founding to 2018 (internal records list 2017). The founders were Eli Ben-Sasson of the Technion, a founding scientist of Zcash and co-inventor of the STARK and FRI protocols; his former PhD student Michael Riabzev; Uri Kolodny, who served as the first CEO; and Alessandro Chiesa of UC Berkeley, who took the chief scientist role. The company was built on theoretical research on zero-knowledge proofs conducted by Ben-Sasson, Riabzev and others at the Technion, applying to blockchain scalability the same mathematical foundations that had underpinned Zcash's privacy design.
Business model
StarkWare develops and operates proof infrastructure for blockchains. StarkEx is described as a standalone Validity-Rollup delivered as a SaaS offering that client applications build on, while Starknet is a permissionless public network with a native token, STRK, used for transaction fees, staking for consensus and governance voting. The company also makes venture investments in ecosystem projects.
Sources do not specify pricing. StarkEx is characterized as a SaaS-style rollup service used by client applications, and Starknet's STRK token is used to pay transaction fees. In April 2026 the CEO stated the company intends to convert its technological lead into "tangible revenue" by focusing on a smaller set of products enabled by its proprietary stack.
Traction
Company-reported network metrics as of 20 August 2026 show $387M in total value locked, roughly 1,000 daily active users, 311 million cumulative transactions and a daily maximum throughput of 992 TPS. As of May 2022 there had been 100,000 downloads of developer tools for building on Starknet. StarkEx is used by Sorare, dYdX, Immutable X, Opera and DeversiFi. The company has also made 15 disclosed venture investments in ecosystem projects.
Latest developments
Through 2025 and 2026 StarkWare shipped a mobile-optimized ZK prover (May 2025), lightweight Bitcoin verification for mobile devices (September 2025), the Starknet Earn Portal (November 2025), a Quantum-Safe Bitcoin scheme published by Avihu Levy (April 2026), the STRK20 privacy framework for ERC-20 tokens on Starknet (June 2026) and Private KYC (June 2026), plus a consumer-grade hardware ZK prover and the S-two public alpha. It is developing post-quantum migration plans for Starknet and quantum-resistant upgrades for Bitcoin. Company communications describe an ambition for Starknet to settle simultaneously on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. In April 2026 the company reorganized into two product units led by Avihu Levy and Tom Brand and reduced headcount.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
StarkWare is described as one of the most technically prominent companies in the zero-knowledge proof space, with its CEO characterizing it as the technology leader in ZK-proof infrastructure. It reached an $8B valuation in May 2022, quadrupling from $2B six months earlier, and joined the Israeli unicorn club in November 2021. Directory data groups it with Matter Labs, Offchain Labs, Cartesi and NuCypher as comparable companies.
StarkWare's proofs are transparent (no trusted setup), succinct and post-quantum secure, distinguishing them from proof systems requiring secret keys, and its founders co-invented the underlying STARK and FRI protocols. It controls a vertically integrated stack — the Cairo language, Sierra, and its own provers — and later-generation STARK solutions can aggregate batches from multiple disparate applications into a single proof. Management describes this stack as a technological moat enabling products competitors cannot deliver.
Technology
The core technology is STARK, a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof system that is succinct, transparent (requiring no trusted setup or secret keys) and post-quantum secure. Proofs of computational integrity are generated over batched transactions and verified on Ethereum, with each batch settled via roughly an 80KB proof. Programs are written in Cairo, a Turing-complete language for STARK-provable general computation that powers both StarkEx and Starknet. Additional components include the Stwo prover built on the Circle STARK protocol over the M31 Mersenne prime field (developed with Polygon Labs), ethSTARK, Ziggy and VeeDo, the Sierra intermediate representation, mobile-optimized and consumer-hardware provers, and post-quantum proving systems. Third-party profiling lists an operational stack including Elastic stack (ELK), Argo Project, SQL and NoSQL databases, Redis, Aerospike, Flask, Onsen UI, LottieFiles and Branch.
Go-to-market
The company markets through developer-facing channels — documentation, Cairo tooling and a code playground, open-source libraries and research publications — plus direct engagement with applications adopting StarkEx. Its website lists contact routes for marketing/events, customer and partner inquiries, and bug reports, and it maintains an active hiring pipeline for engineering and product roles. Ecosystem investments in projects such as zkLend, Braavos, Argent, Espresso Systems and Bitlayer also serve to expand adoption.
Developers and projects building decentralized applications that need high throughput and privacy, including NFT platforms, derivatives and spot exchanges, AMMs, payments and DeFi protocols. Named users of StarkEx include Sorare, dYdX, Immutable X, the Opera browser and DeversiFi.
Geography
Headquartered in Netanya, Central District, Israel (32 Ha'melacha St.), serving a worldwide market; one directory reports employees across five continents including Asia, Europe and North America.
History
After its 2018 founding, StarkWare raised a $6M seed round and a $30M Series A led by Paradigm with Intel Capital, Sequoia Capital, Coinbase and Vitalik Buterin participating. In April 2019 the Technion sued Ben-Sasson and Riabzev over intellectual property, claiming StarkWare was founded on academic research without consent and demanding half of Ben-Sasson's stake; the dispute was settled in 2020, after which Ben-Sasson left the Technion. StarkEx launched on Ethereum in June 2020 and Starknet in June 2021. A $75M Series B led by Paradigm closed in March 2021, alongside a $12M grant from the Ethereum Foundation, followed by a $50M Series C led by Sequoia in November 2021 at a $2B valuation and a $100M Series D in May 2022 led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue Management at an $8B valuation, completed during a bear market. Product releases continued through 2025-2026, including a mobile-optimized ZK prover, lightweight Bitcoin verification for mobile, the Starknet Earn Portal, the STRK20 privacy framework and Private KYC. On 13 April 2026 the company announced a restructuring into two product-focused business units accompanied by layoffs.
Risks & controversies
In April 2019 the Technion sued Ben-Sasson and Riabzev, alleging StarkWare was established using institutional intellectual property without consent and seeking 50% of Ben-Sasson's equity; the case settled in 2020 with Ben-Sasson leaving the Technion. In April 2026 the company disclosed layoffs and a restructuring, with the CEO stating it had become "too big and too inefficient," against a backdrop of shutdowns, bankruptcies and layoffs across the crypto industry; the STRK token traded at about $0.033 at the time. Reported employee counts, founding year (2017 vs. 2018) and cumulative funding totals ($261M vs. $273M) differ across sources.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 10
by search overlap
Companies competing with Starkware for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 11
launches, deals, and filingsStarkWare reported to be developing post-quantum migration plans for Starknet and quantum-resistant upgrades for Bitcoin.
A privacy framework for ERC-20 tokens on Starknet allowing users to shield balances and transaction data with mechanisms for disclosure in certain circumstances.
CEO Eli Ben-Sasson announced on X a strategic restructuring focusing on fewer high-value products, reorganizing into two purpose-focused units led by general managers Avihu Levy and Tom Brand, accompanied by layoffs.
Avihu Levy of StarkWare published a paper outlining a scheme called Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB).
StarkWare launched Starknet, a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup open to any developer, with native token STRK used for fees, staking and governance.
StarkWare released StarkEx, a proprietary permissioned Validity-Rollup scaling engine, on Ethereum mainnet; adopters include Sorare, dYdX, Immutable X, Opera and DeversiFi.
The Technion sued Eli Ben-Sasson and Michael Riabzev, claiming StarkWare was established using academic research without consent and demanding 50% of Ben-Sasson's stake. The parties settled in 2020 and Ben-Sasson left the Technion.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structure▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Starkwarestarkware.co · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Starkware do?
- Israeli cryptography company building STARK-based zero-knowledge proof scaling systems, including StarkEx and the Starknet rollup.
- Who founded Starkware?
- Starkware was founded by Eli Ben-Sasson, Uri Kolodny, Alessandro Chiesa, Michael Riabzev in 2017.
- Who are Starkware's investors?
- Starkware's investors include Balaji Srinivasan, Bollinger Investment Group, Chapter One, Coatue Management, Coinbase Ventures, Collab+Currency, Communitas Capital Partners, ConsenSys Mesh and 13 more.
- How much funding has Starkware raised?
- Starkware has disclosed $261.5M raised across 6 of its 9 known rounds.
- Where is Starkware headquartered?
- Starkware is headquartered in Netanya, IL.