Quick take:
- Magic Eden has completed a $130 million Series B round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners.
- The fundraising now values the NFT marketplace, launched just nine months ago at $1.6 billion, reaching unicorn status.
- Lightspeed Venture Partners, Paradigm and Sequoia Capital also participated in the round.
Magic Eden has announced the successful completion of a $130 million funding round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners.
The Series B round now values the NFT marketplace launched just nine months ago at $1.6 billion, thus reaching unicorn status. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Paradigm and Sequoia Capital also participated in the fundraising.
Commenting on his company’s latest fundraising, Zhuoxun Yin, COO of Magic Eden said reaching unicorn status in such a short time “more than validates the industry and market we’re in.”
“There’s investor appetite to bet on this market. We’re very bullish on the horizon, there’s a lot to build and most of the use cases are still early, so this gives us an opportunity to build that,” Yin added.
Magic Eden offers an NFT launchpad, which currently has 250 projects. Its secondary NFT marketplace has also experienced significant penetration, with more than 7,000 NFT collections listed to date. The platform also accounts for approximately 92% of all Solana-based NFT volume.
The platform has also seen its monthly unique session rise to 20 million, on average while minting approximately 50k Solana-based NFTs.
“When we started, we weren’t the first movers on Solana. We had to play catch-up,” Yin told TechCrunch. “So this didn’t fall in our laps; we built on the community’s wants and did what they wanted to do and I think it served us well and is something we’ll continue to focus on.”
Magic Eden plans to use funds to scale its primary and secondary NFT marketplaces whilst also searching for multi-chain opportunities beyond the Solana blockchain ecosystem. This seems to be the target of any NFT marketplace after creating a strong foundation for growth.
OpenSea, which predominantly offered Ethereum-based NFTs, recently added Solana-based NFTs to its platform.
Jack Lu, CEO of Magic Eden commented: “I think when you think about different use cases in crypto overall, right now it’s clear NFTs are a bridge from the average consumer to the blockchain world. It’s cultural, it’s about communities on the internet and is much more emotionally relatable.”
Lu said that Magic Eden is a user-first NFT marketplace and thus will look to go where the users are and “better serve them.”
Stay up to date:
