OpenSea, the New York-based non-fungible token market (NFT), has reportedly raised $ 100 million, valued the company at $ 1.5 billion, and raised more capital to drive NFT adoption.

OpenSea raises $ 100 million

The new funding comes as OpenSea NFTs expands to a wide range of key audiences and represents an entirely new economy based on digital ownership. Today, OpenSea is the largest marketplace for NFTs, representing in-game items, digital art and collectibles, event tickets, domains, and millions of other blockchain-based assets.

The investment round, after a Series A round of $ 23 million in March, was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with the participation of Coatue, as well as Michael Ovitz, Kevin Hartz, Dylan Field, Kevin Durant, Ashton Kutcher and Tobie Lutke companies said.

The company claims that its “further mission is to create systems and standards that enable the conversion of all kinds of digital wealth into forms that can truly be owned and freely exchanged”.

OpenSea also announced cross-blockchain support, starting with an air marketplace on the polygon blockchain (MATIC). “Buyers no longer have to pay blockchain fees when transacting on OpenSea, and creators can fully monetize with crypto for the first time,” they said.

“We’re making the product more accessible to the mainstream consumer by building a referral type in the core market and really strengthening OpenSea as the brand is directly tied to the NFT, which is very similar to the way Coinbase is branding around Crypto, ”said Devin Finzer, CEO of OpenSea.

Previously, OpenSea was limited to Ethereum, the popular cryptocurrency platform that has been criticized for consuming a lot of computing power and wasting energy. It now adds transactions on the Polygon platform so transactions can be made without the high transaction fees associated with using computers.

Over the open sea

OpenSea, based in New York, is one of the largest digital marketplaces for crypto and NFT collections. It sells NFTs, which are uniquely identifiable digital items that can be validated through the blockchain (the transparent and secure digital ledger behind cryptocurrencies).

Andreessen Horowitz, also known as A16z, led the second round of institutional funding with angel investor Michael Ovitz (CAA co-founder) and actor and investor Ashton Kutcher. The funding amount means that OpenSea is a unicorn or startup with a valuation of $ 1 billion. It is one of 900 unicorns with a cumulative valuation of $ 3 trillion.

With this capital, OpenSea will continue to scale its NFT platform and immediately focus on recruiting technical talent, expanding internationally into new markets and audiences, and creating many opportunities to easily access, buy and sell digital assets.

CEO Devin Finzer said in an interview with GamesBeat that we are experiencing one of the greatest fundamental changes in the internet economy in decades and he is proud to lead the way and point of entry for NFT.

“Fundraising was really about helping the spread of NFTs,” says Finzer. “And it’s about expanding the platform we’ve built, which saw significant volume growth in the first half of last year. We think NFT is really one of those paradigms that change in very interesting ways every couple of decades. “

In June alone, OpenSea sold $ 160 million in digital assets on its NFT marketplace and saw 45x volume growth in the first half of 2021 from sales of just $ 8 million in January.

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