Current price104.89 (US$308,735.32)
Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and new owners of the CryptoPunks and Meebits brands, announced it is now valued at $4 billion after its latest $450 million seed funding round.
VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, led the company’s first institutional investment, marking one of the largest seed rounds for any nonfungible token (NFT) collection to date.
The Miami-based NFT firm behind Bored Apes Yacht Club has not previously raised funding, though the startup has long been courting attention from VCs eager to back a major player in the NFT craze. Other investors in the round include Animoca Brands, LionTree, Sound Ventures, Thrive Capital, FTX and MoonPay. ( Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT price on Opensea. )
Yuga Labs is increasingly doubling down on its position. Earlier this month, the startup announced it had acquired the assets of popular NFT projects CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs. The acquisition put three of the most lucrative NFT collections under one roof — and gave Yuga Labs a bigger roster of IP to pull from when crafting its game and metaverse plans.
The startup is also fresh off the launch of ApeCoin, which the startup’s founders and executives have a substantial stake in. The token gathered a multibillion-dollar market cap on its first day of trading.
The startup is soon looking to build this momentum into its own version of the metaverse called “Otherside,” which will also integrate avatars from a number of other NFT projects.
The team describes its metaverse project, called Otherside, as an MMORPG meant to connect the broader NFT universe. They hope to create “an interoperable world” that is “gamified” and “completely decentralized,” says Wylie Aronow, a co-founder of Bored Ape Yacht Club who goes by the pseudonym Gordon Goner. “We think the real Ready Player One experience will be player run.”
Yuga Labs is partnering with “a few different game studios” to bring Otherside to life, says CEO Nicole Muniz. The game won’t be limited to Bored Ape holders, and the company plans to create development tools that allow NFTs from other projects to work inside their world. “We’re opening the door to effectively a walled garden and saying ‘Everybody’s welcome.’”
As a leading NFT brand, Yuga Labs—which created the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs and recently acquired the CryptoPunks and Meebits IP from Larva Labs—is looking to further expand its presence. With its new funding, Yuga plans to hire more employees and develop brand partnerships.
An NFT is a digital asset that uses blockchain technology to record who owns a digital object such as an image, video, or in-game item. Bored Apes NFTs are often used as profile pictures on social media.
Sales of NFTs reached $25 billion in 2021, compared to just $94.9 million the year before, data from market tracker DappRadar shows.
However, even as NFTs attract fans including former U.S. first lady Melania Trump and Jamaican sprint great Usain Bolt, some have questioned why so much money is spent on items that do not physically exist.
The official announcement of the funding caps off what has been a monumental two weeks for Yuga Labs. The company acquired the intellectual property of rival blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks on March 11 and on March 16 the Bored Ape Yacht Club-linked ApeCoin (APE) token launched by proxy. ApeCoin now boasts a $12 billion market cap, according to data from CoinMarketCap.