The owner of one of the largest NFT Collections BAYC, Yuga Labs, announced today that it has raised $450 million in a seed funding round at an eye-popping $4 billion valuation.
The creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection have never previously raised funds, and its current seed round places its overall valuation among the highest ever for a seed-round investment.
The current funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm – a16z crypto fund. Its Twitter avatar was changed to that of a Bored Ape NFT #3592 after the new funding was announced.
Metaverse gaming company Animoca Brands and crypto exchange FTX which have already reaped the benefits of BAYC’s ApeCoin were also among the many investors. Along with them Animoca’s subsidiary The Sandbox, crypto investment firms LionTree, Sound Ventures, and Thrive Capital, as well as cryptocurrency player MoonPay were other collaborators.
The startup plans to leverage momentum into its own version of the “hinted” metaverse project ‘Otherside’ which will include avatars from a number of other NFT projects to be powered by its own token $APE.
The funds will be also used to scale its rapidly growing team, attract the best talent across creative, engineering, and operations functions, as well as for planned joint ventures and partnerships. Yuga Labs appears to be increasing its bets on its position as the standout NFT creators.
With the latest raise, Chris Lyons, general partner at a16z crypto, will join Yuga Labs’ board. He said, “Mainstream adoption in web3 is accelerating at lightning speed, and Yuga is at the forefront of merging culture and innovation for everyone to enter the metaverse.”
Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs said, “Already, a new economy is possible with the IP of Apes, Punks, and Meebits, owned by the community. The possibilities for blockchain’s impact on culture are endless, and so we are building a beautiful, interoperable world for people to explore and play in. There’s a lot to come.”
