Singapore-based Merkle Science, a predictive crypto intelligence service with threat detection, risk mitigation, and compliance tools, raised a $24M+ Series A
Brandy Betz / CoinDesk :
Context & Ripple Effects
Merkle Science's $24M+ Series A extends a funding line Singapore has been building for years: CashShield's Temasek-led fraud-detection round in 2018 and Advance.ai's $80M raise for bank-facing fraud scoring showed the city-state's investors already back risk-analytics vendors serving financial institutions.
What changed is the target market. Where those predecessors sold into banking broadly, Merkle Science sells predictive threat detection and compliance tooling specifically to crypto firms — the same financial-crime analytics category London's ComplyAdvantage validated with its own $30M Series B three years earlier.
First-order effects
- Crypto exchanges and virtual-asset service providers gain a Singapore-based compliance vendor with fresh capital to scale threat detection and risk mitigation tools at exactly the moment regulatory scrutiny of the sector is intensifying.
Second-order effects
- Merkle Science now competes head-to-head with established financial-crime analytics players like ComplyAdvantage for institutional compliance budgets, pushing both toward more predictive, blockchain-native offerings rather than static screening.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Singapore repeatedly funding fraud and risk intelligence startups across banking and now crypto — the city-state consolidates its position as a hub where compliance software is treated as core financial infrastructure rather than a cost center.
The trend: Compliance and risk-intelligence tooling is becoming the durable funding category of fintech security, with Singapore's ecosystem extending it from traditional banking into crypto.