The Largest Ever for a Seed Round
Bored Ape is reported to be the most significant collection in the NFT space. On the 22nd of March, 2022, Yuga Labs announced that it had raised $450 million in its first-ever funding seed round. Yuga Labs also announced a new metaverse project that has built their investors’ anticipation. Although it’s the first, it increased the company’s valuation to about $4b, and both the raise and valuation are the highest ever achieved in the seed round.
Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm, led the funding round for this Miami-based Web-3 company, and other large Web 3 companies like Coinbase, Animoca Brands, FTX, and MoonPay, contributed. Other participating investors include Lion Tree, Thrive Capital, and Sound Ventures.
The company plans to use its new funding to hire more talent in its creative, engineering, and operations departments. They have also noted that they would undertake more partnerships and joint ventures with other brands. After this achievement, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Chris Lyons, loaned his Bored Ape to the company, and they used it as their Twitter profile picture. He also announced that he would be joining the board of Yuga Labs.
The CEO of Yuga Labs, Nicole Muniz, also expressed excitement and stated, ‘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.’ News about this massive funding round was revealed in February when the Financial Times stated that Yuga Labs was pursuing funding for a multi-million-dollar stake.
Yuga Labs is the Leading NFT Brand
Yuga Labs is well-known as the leading Web-3 company and NFT brand. The company created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, which is now owned by various celebrities, including Justin Beiber, Kevin Hart, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, and other influential persons.
To further expand its presence, Yuga Labs recently purchased the IP of CryptoPunks and Meebits and planned to give full commercial rights to NFT holders. Since Yuga Labs was founded in 2021, the company has only made a profit by directly selling its NFTs and issuing tokens.
It’s impressive that the first-ever funding was one of the largest seed rounds for any non-fungible token so far. Their NFTs, which are tokens that represent different digital creations, including artwork, have become very popular as an alternative investment for the past 12 months.
However, Yuga Labs is expanding its presence further than NFTs, and it announced it along with the success of its funding round.
Otherside, a New MetaverseProject, Was Announced
Yuga Labs has announced that they are working on a new Metaverse project called Otherside. This would be an NFT-based MMORPG game where players can use NFTs as their characters to play the game, but it would not be limited to NFT holders.
It is also expected that the Ape Coin, the official token of the BAYC collection, will be used as the official currency in the game. The Ape Coin was recently launched through an airdrop to NFT holders for free, and it is reported that they made thousands of dollars of profit after selling it to non-NFT holders. The cryptocurrency is available for trading on major exchanges, including Coinbase Global Inc., eToro, FTX Digital Markets, and Gemini Trust Company.
The company released a teaser of Otherside, with a few public details to share. It features different NFT creations, including the Bored Ape, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, Nouns, Cool Cats, CrypToadz, Meebits, and World of Women.
It is also speculated that the gaming experience will be powered by Animoca, one of the major investors in the recent funding round. This is because the company tweeted that they would be entering the BAYC universe and would use the Ape Coin for a secret project they are working on with the Bored Ape.
