Bored Apes creator secures $450M in funding round, hits $4B valuation

Yuga Labs, the creator behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, has yet again made headlines after securing a whopping $450 million in its recent funding round. Predictably, the latest investment has taken the startup’s total valuation to $4 billion.

Led by the popular venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the round saw participation from Animoca Brands, The Sandbox, LionTree, Sound Ventures, FTX, and MoonPay. The company reportedly plans to use the fund to develop its recently announced open metaverse game ‘Otherside.’

In addition, Yuga Labs will also “scale its rapidly growing team, attract the best talent across creative, engineering, and operations functions, and for joint ventures and partnerships it has planned,” per the press release.

“Already, a new economy is possible with the IP of Apes, Punks, and Meebits, owned by the community,” said Nicole Muniz, CEO of Yuga Labs, taking note of the company’s recent acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections. She added:

“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.”

Yuga Labs has recently made several forward-looking announcements to expand the Bored Ape Yacht Club from just an NFT collection to a complete ecosystem. The company recently adopted the newly created ApeCoin as the official currency for the BAYC.

The ApeCoin was created by ApeCoin DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, FTX’s Amy Wu, Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu, Sound Ventures’ Maaria Bajwa, and Horizen Labs’ Dean Steinbeck as members of its council. With the latest raise, the coin has increased by more than 20% to $13.01.

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