OpenSea, has raised $300 million in new venture capital. The new round of funding, led by the investment firms Paradigm and Coatue Management, brings the start-up’s valuation to a staggering $13.3 billion just four years after it was founded. OpenSea previously raised more than $100 million from a host of investors, including the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz and the actor Ashton Kutcher, according to data provided by the company.
Founded in 2017, OpenSea was created as a marketplace for people to buy and sell so-called NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, which are unique pieces of digital code backed by blockchain technology.
NFT items can vary, but the most popular tokens are pieces of digital art created by artists who list their pieces for auction on the OpenSea site, similar to listing on eBay. Winning bids can sometimes reach hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency and blockchain technology connected to most kinds of NFTs.
More than $3 billion in private investment went into NFT companies in 2021, according to data compiled by PitchBook, a firm that tracks private investments. Overall, investors poured more than $28 billion into cryptocurrency and NFT start-ups around the world last year, PitchBook said.
