Developers of the NBA Top Shot NFT platform raise $305 million from Michael Jordan and other investors

The Dapper Labs project, behind the development of a blockchain ecosystem for fast dapps, has closed a $305 million financing round featuring NBA stars and venture investors.

Excited to share that we have just announced a $305 million funding round to grow our ecosystem on our path to mainstream adoption 🥳

Learn more here 👇https://t.co/ZTDgaD9uij

— Dapper Labs (@dapperlabs) March 30, 2021

The round was led by investment firm Coatue. It was joined by NBA legend Michael Jordan, basketball star Kevin Durant, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures and Guy Oseary, Will Smith’s Dreamers VC, rapper 2 Chainz, and a number of other investors.

The venture firm Andreessen Horowitz also participated in the financing through its crypto funds and growth funds.

According to USA Today, investors valued the project at $2.6 billion.

Dapper Labs is known for the game CryptoKitties. In 2018 the company raised $15 million from Google, Samsung and Andreessen Horowitz.

In 2019 the project raised $11.2 million to build the Flow blockchain. The team also struck partnerships with the NBA, the UFC, Dr. Suess and Warner Music Group.

The first game on the Flow blockchain was NBA Top Shot. It resembles CryptoKitties, but instead of kittens, users collect non-fungible tokens called NBA Moments.

What is an NFT?

Rapper LL Cool J, billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and SoFi CEO Anthony Noto invested in a new cryptocurrency venture fund with $72 million in assets. It invested in Dapper Labs, the Nori and Axelar projects.

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