Bahrain-based cryptocurrency exchange Rain Financial raises a $110M Series B co-led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins, following a $6M Series A in January 2021
Brandy Betz / CoinDesk :
Context & Ripple Effects
In January 2021 Rain Financial raised a $6M Series A; a year later it is back with a $110M Series B co-led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins — an 18x step-up in round size for a Bahrain-based exchange, and a signal that US blue-chip crypto capital was willing to underwrite a Gulf licensing footprint. Kleiner's involvement also fits its broader fundraise activity in the corpus, where it reported a large fund with a dedicated growth-stage allocation.
The longer arc matters more than the round itself: the same Rain later resurfaces in coverage as a stablecoin-backed Visa card issuer, first with a $58M Series B led by Sapphire Ventures in 2025 and then a $250M Series C at a $1.95B valuation in 2026, taking total funding past $338M. The 2022 exchange round is the balance sheet from which that pivot into card infrastructure was funded.
First-order effects
- Rain Financial gains an $110M war chest co-led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins, letting a Bahrain-licensed exchange compete on product and geographic expansion rather than regional capital constraints.
- Kleiner Perkins deploys its newly raised growth-stage allocation into crypto, alongside its seed-and-Series-A co-lead with Sequoia in Traversal — a two-ended bet across the stage spectrum.
Second-order effects
- Regional MENA exchanges now face a well-funded local rival with US-tier investors, forcing them to either raise at comparable scale or differentiate on licensing and market access.
- Rain's later card business puts it in the embedded-payments lane against players like Atlanta-based Rainforest, which raised a $29M Series B for platform-embedded processing — the same 'infrastructure for platforms' buyer, approached via stablecoins instead of processing rails.
Third-order effects
- The corpus trajectory — exchange funding in 2022, stablecoin Visa card issuance by 2025-26 at a near-$2B valuation — points to crypto infrastructure consolidating around payments rails rather than trading venues, with Gulf-licensed firms as the issuance layer for global card programs.
- If the pattern holds, the durable asset from rounds like this is the regulatory license and card-network relationship, not the exchange order book — reshaping which Gulf jurisdictions capture crypto value.
The trend: Crypto venture capital is rotating from regional exchange plays toward stablecoin payment infrastructure, with Gulf-licensed issuers becoming the card rails for global programs.