Mesh raises $75M Series C at $1B valuation as crypto payments infrastructure heats up

Crypto payments startup Mesh Connect has raised $75 million in a Series C round, pushing its valuation to $1 billion and officially landing it in unicorn territory. The round closed January 27, 2026, and brings total funding raised by the company to more than $200 million since its founding in 2020.

The round was led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, Moderne Ventures, SBI Investment, and Liberty City Ventures.

What Mesh actually does

Mesh builds infrastructure that connects payments across wallets, exchanges, and chains without users or merchants needing to care about which specific token or network sits underneath. The company does not operate its own token.

One concrete example of Mesh in action is PayPal’s “Pay with Crypto” feature. Mesh’s infrastructure underpins those transactions, connecting PayPal’s user base to the broader crypto settlement layer.

A quick funding history

This Series C follows a Series B closed in March 2025, when Mesh raised $82 million in a round also led by Paradigm. A significant portion of that raise was settled in PayPal USD, the PYUSD stablecoin.

Prior to the Series B, Mesh had raised between $120 million and $130 million in total, with backing from PayPal Ventures and Consensys among others.

Founders Bam Azizi and Adam Israel started the company in San Francisco in 2020.

What this means for the market

Paradigm has backed Mesh across multiple rounds. Coinbase Ventures’ participation is notable: Coinbase has its own payments ambitions, and backing a neutral infrastructure player rather than building exclusively in-house suggests the market is large enough for multiple approaches.

A meaningful portion of Mesh’s visible use case runs through PayPal’s infrastructure. The investor base, which includes Coinbase Ventures alongside PayPal Ventures, suggests Mesh is actively working to diversify those dependencies.