PayPal in talks to acquire cryptocurrency security company Curv in a nine-digit deal

Multinational online payments company PayPal Holdings, Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire Team8-backed Cryptography security startup Curv Inc., a person familiar with the move told Calcalist under the condition of anonymity. Paypal is in negotiations to purchase the Israeli startup for between $200 million-$300 million.

This will be Israeli venture group Team8’s third notable exit, after it sold Sygnia to Singapore-based Temasek for $250 million in 2018 and Portshift Software Technologies Ltd. to Cisco for $100 million last year.

Cuv was founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Itay Malinger, who serves as CEO, and Dan Yadlin (CTO) both graduates of Israeli military intelligence’s Talpiot program. The company has developed an encryption technology based on multi-party computing, which secures digital assets and enables them to be safely transferred, stored, and managed on any blockchain or distributed ledger.

Curv’s solution ensures that an individual’s private key never exists in one location, but instead is distributed between the customer’s cold wallet and their cloud services, which eliminates the risks inherent in keeping assets safe in one location - whether virtually or physically - and can be a single point of failure.

“We provide cloud services that protect digital assets from malfunctions, but ensure that they are always at the organization’s disposal. Our customers are primarily cryptocurrency exchanges, but also investors who want to diversify their assets, whether those are classic institutional bodies or investment agencies that specialize in the field,” Malinger told Calcalist following the company’s previous funding round. “Organizations require vastly different levels of control of their digital assets than individual coin holders, in terms of the ability to transfer the currencis, deal with cyberattacks, and allow employees to enter and exit systems or provide them with the ability to manage their assets.”