Led by Andreessen Horowitz, the seed funding round is one of the largest funding operations in the non-fungible token market.
Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and new owners of the CryptoPunks and Meebits brands, announced that it is now valued at $4 billion after its latest seed funding round of $450 million. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, led the company’s first institutional investment, marking one of the largest seed rounds for any non-fungible token (NFT) collection to date.
Other investors included Animoca Brands, FTX, and MoonPay, as well as LionTree, Sound Ventures, and Thrive Capital. The company plans to use the funds to expand its team, attract more creative, engineering and operations talent, as well as for future joint ventures and partnerships.
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To mark the occasion, Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Chris Lyons lent his boring jumpsuit to a16z, who posted it as the company’s new Twitter profile photo. Lyons tweeted that he will join the board of Yuga Labs to help “shape the future of culture and innovation.”
Big thanks to @ChrisLyons for loaning us his Ape today. We can’t wait to see what’s next for the @BoredApeYCPunks, Meebits, and the @yugalabs team.
— a16z (@a16z) March 22, 2022
Many thanks to Chris Lyons for lending us his Ape today. We can’t wait to see what’s next for the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Punks, Meebits, and the team at Yuga Labs.
Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs, also stated that “there is much to come” given the “new economy” of Apes, Punks and Meebits intellectual property, or IP. Yuga Labs recently purchased the CryptoPunks and Meebits IP from Larva Labs and plans to give full commercial rights to NFT holders.
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Cointelegraph first reported on the alleged deal last month when the The Financial Times revealed that Yuga Labs was seeking funding for a multi-million dollar stake. While the company could have confirmed its investment in the initial round on TuesdayYuga Labs hinted at a new metaverse project called Otherside on March 18.
See you on the Otherside in April. powered by @apecoin pic.twitter.com/1cnSk1CjXS
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) March 19, 2022
The Otherside metaverse announcement followed the trading debut of its upcoming marketplace’s new cryptocurrency token called ApeCoin. The asset, which was developed and launched by the decentralized autonomous organization ApeCoin, or DAO, experienced wild volatility in its first hours on the market and even affected the average price of the BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Bored Ape Kennel Club collections.
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