OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, revealed on Tuesday that it has raised $300 million in a Series C fundraising round, valuing the company at $13.3 billion.
Venture finance firms Paradigm and Coatue lead the round.
Former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun’s new fund, KRH, confirmed to Decrypt that it invested in the round; a16z participated in both the Series A and Series B, and Haun sits on the board of OpenSea.
The money will be to scale up product development and hire more staff, as well as improve customer support and help grow the larger NFT and Web3 market, according to OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer in a blog post announcing the funding.
“Our vision is to be the destination for these new open digital economies to thrive,”
So, Finzer says in a statement.
“We’ll start this year by lowering the barriers to entry to the NFT space on OpenSea and investing in the ecosystem and the community that powers it.”
“Announcing Series C! We’re building the friendliest & most trusted NFT marketplace with the best selection across many chains. The funding helps us accelerate product development, improve trust & safety, and invest deeply in the web3 community & ecosystem.”
https://t.co/OmRPleMCOX
— OpenSea (@opensea) January 5, 2022
OpenSea at $1.5 billion as recently as July 2020, following a $100 million Series B financing. The Information states in November that its Series C would be at $10 billion.
The $13.3 billion figure released by OpenSea today highlights the growing popularity of NFTs, which are blockchain-based documents of ownership for digital assets. Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, for example, have hosted some of the most popular Ethereum-based NFT collections in the area on OpenSea.
OpenSea’s monthly volume has continued to impress, as Decrypt highlighted just this week. Also, months after many branded non-fungible tokens a fad when the initial fervor died down.
The NFT market exploded in August, and OpenSea had its second-largest month ever in December. That’s, with $3 billion worth of Ethereum NFTs changing hands.
So far in the new year, it hasn’t slowed down. With $243 million in Ethereum NFT volume on January 2, it experienced its third-best trading day ever. Polygon NFT trade volume is also increasing, having increased for three months in a straight to $76.1 million in December.
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