NFT marketplace OpenSea raises $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation

NFT-marketplace OpenSea raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The deal valued the company at $1.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Other investors included Coatue Management, Creative Artists Agency and its co-founder Michael Ovitz, as well as business angels Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Durant, Sean Mendes and Kevin Hart.

The deal envisions a16z general partner Kathryn Haun joining OpenSea’s board of directors. The money raised from investors will be directed toward scaling the platform, enabling inter-network interoperability, expanding into new markets, expanding the team of specialists, and improving the user experience.

In an interview with VentureBeat, CEO Devin Finzer said that OpenSea has become the first NFT marketplace to support multiple blockchains at once. The platform is already integrated with Polygon and Klaytn, and in the future it will be able to interact with the Flow and Tezos networks.

OpenSea product chief Nate Chastain noted that the Polygon integration allows users to purchase assets issued on that blockchain with a debit or credit card. He added that the feature is live in a limited rollout.

We’ve soft-launched support for purchasing Polygon assets with credit and debit cards on OpenSea.

Still a lot to tune up and improve, but if you’ve been on the fence about purchasing a @zed_run horse and want to skip the Polygon bridging flow, you now can now pay with cards 💳 pic.twitter.com/rvzNHbrgBw

— Nate Chastain (natec.eth) (@natechastain) July 20, 2021

The Polygon integration has helped the company reduce potential transactional costs for users, previously tied to gas payments on the Ethereum network. According to OpenSea’s site, for a range of actions such as minting and listing NFTs on an auction, no fees will be charged.

In the first half of 2021, total NFT sales volume reached $2.5 billion. In June, OpenSea’s figure rose to a record around $150 million. By way of comparison: according to Dune Analytics, in January the marketplace’s sales volume did not exceed $9 million.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Finzer noted that in July the platform’s figure had already surpassed the previous month.

Earlier reports suggested that Sorare was close to closing a funding round of $532 million. The valuation of the NFT fantasy football platform was expected to be at least $3.8 billion.

In March, the developers of the NFT platform NBA Top Shot raised $305 million from Michael Jordan and other investors. According to USA Today, the project was valued at $2.6 billion.

Earlier in the month, OpenSea raised $23 million in a Series A round led by a16z.

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