Quick take:
- The Series A round was led by Dapper Labs, Spartan Labs, Commonwealth Asset Management (CWAM), and Fundamental Labs.
- Funds will be used to move beyond sports and pursue entertainment and culture deals.
- NFT Genius has partnered with top athletes and artists such as NFT Genius Shaquille O’Neal, golfer Bryson DeChambeau, WNBA’s Kelsey Plum and more.
NFT Genius, a company that delivers NFT projects and marketplace technology, today announced that it has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding at a valuation of $150 million.
The round was led by Dapper Labs, Spartan Capital, Commonwealth Asset Management (CWAM), and Fundamental Labs, with participation from One Football, and Unibanco.
In June 2021, NFT Genius raised a seed round of $4 million backed by Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou, Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher and bitcoin advocate Anthony Pompliano, at a valuation of $18 million. The latest funding demonstrates huge growth for NFT Genius amid the overall market slump.
NFT Genius was founded by Jeremy Born (CEO), Kurt Braget (CTO), and Karl Meier (VP of Production).
Born told NFTGators in an email that the $4 million seed funding was used to build out IPs like its Ballerz NFT collection, which features 10,000 generative basketball NFTs and debuted on Nov 8 last year. The collection sold out in one hour and translated into $15 million of sales, allowing the company to start the process of building Gaia, an NFT marketplace on Flow.
Gaia serves as the secondary market for sports, entertainment, art, and culturally relevant digital collectibles. Powered by the Dapper Wallet – the same wallet that powers NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day – the marketplace accepts credit card payments to make it easy for non-crypto natives to purchase NFTs.
“We look to companies like Apple, Netflix, eBay, and Amazon to inform us as to what a simple customer experience looks like and try to emulate the user journey so Gaia feels like a natural extension of a typical buying experience someone in web2 has become accustomed to,” Born told NFTgators exclusively.
NFT Genius will be using the new funds to expand its footprints beyond sports and back major entertainment and culture deals to scale out the Gaia marketplace as it aims to reach the mainstream consumer.
Besides Ballerz, NFT Genius also launched another IP, the Rebel Rabbits NFT collection, as well as collectible card sets Bitcoin Origins and Tezos Origins.
Over the past year, NFT Genius has also partnered on NFT deals with top athletes and artists such as Shareef O’Neal, golfer Bryson DeChambeau, WNBA’s Kelsey Plum, and Miami Heat’s Duncan Robinson.
Stay up to date:
