The first and largest peer to peer marketplace for digital collectibles – NFTs OpenSea has become the first company in the NFT niche to become a Unicorn after a recent Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z.
OpenSea announced it has received $100 million investment on tuesday, 20th of July, 2021 which puts the company at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Unicorns are private startups that have become valued at over $1 billion. Other investors who participated in the funding round were Coatue and CAA, Michael Ovitz, Kevin Hartz, Kevin Durant and Ashton Kutcher.
Earlier in March, OpenSea announced it has raised $23 million in a Sries A funding round led by a16z with other investors such as Ron Conway, Mark Cuban, Belinda Johnson, Naval Ravikant, Ben Silbermann etc.
OpenSea revealed that it will use the capital to scale its NFT platform ‘with immediate focus on hiring engineering talent and expanding internationally to new markets and audiences, making buying and selling NFTs more accessible to users.’
In month of June, transaction on the NFT platform was about $160 million and this it noted was a 45x increase in volume growth during the first half of the year.
Devin Finzer, Coofounder & CEO of OpenSea speaking said “with increasing market adoption around crypto economics, NFTs are quickly becoming the new internet”; “it is pretty remarkable to be experiencing one of the biggest fundamental changes the internet economy has seen in decades”
He continued saying
“We’re proud to be leading this growing industry that we have been part of for a long time. As we continue to scale, our focus will remain on our customers, and providing the best user experience and entry point into NFTs.”
OpenSea has been innovating since it launched. One of its recent innovations is the support for Polygon, eliminating gas fees for creators, buyers and sellers on the marketplace. The NFT marketplace revealed its plans to invest in interoperability and scalability of the OpenSea’s crosschain marketplace which is calls the company’s larger vision to bring users closer to Web3.
