Haun Ventures’ Katie Haun leads $50m funding round for NFT startup Zora

The platform for selling non-fungible tokens, Zora, attracted $50 million in funding. The round was led by Haun Ventures, the venture firm founded by former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun.

I’m proud to share that @HaunVentures is leading a $50M funding round in @ourzora, one of web3’s most important protocols. This is the first deal we’ve led in our firm’s history and I can’t imagine a more fitting group for the distinction.https://t.co/x7hmKPSqEv

— Sam Rosenblum (@sjrosenblum) May 5, 2022

The funds will be directed toward accelerating the development of open infrastructure for NFT projects and expanding collaboration with teams in the space. Zora also plans to increase the number of grants awarded and hackathons held.

“Haun Ventures is about supporting teams that make the internet better. This means more opportunities online, creativity, security and accountability than in the previous version. NFTs are the foundational building block at the heart of the internet’s future”, said Sam Rosenblum, a partner at the venture firm.

In December 2021, Haun left a16z to pursue her own Web 3.0–focused project. Haun Ventures planned to raise $900 million across two investment funds. By March, it emerged that the size of the funds had reached $1.5 billion.

According to Rosenblum, the Zora funding round was the first led by the firm.

“We have only seen the tip of the NFT iceberg in Web 3.0, and we believe that Zora will become one of the most important protocols (and DAOs), as the NFT ecosystem and its use cases expand significantly in the coming years”, he noted.

In April 2021, the startup raised $8 million from five unnamed investors.