NFT platform Fractional rebrands as Tessera and raises $20 million

The Fractional platform for fractional ownership of NFTs has rebranded as Tessera. The company also announced the closing of a $20 million Series A funding round.

We’re entering a revolutionary new phase of NFTs and excited to announce a new name powered by the close of our Series A!

Fractional is now Tessera, reflecting our ambitious vision as the place to own and govern NFTs, together 💪💪https://t.co/FRhwnIICVj

— Tessera (@tessera) August 17, 2022

The platform enables users to own shares in NFTs. Its services were, for example, used by PleasrDAO, which fragmented the Dogecoin meme cryptocurrency symbol into a non-fungible token representing 17 billion DOG.

According to the statement, since its launch in 2021, Fractional has enabled more than 70,000 people to collectively own over 6,500 NFTs.

The funding round was led by Paradigm. Participants included Focus Labs, Uniswap Labs Ventures, E Girl Capital, Yunt Capital and more than 50 angel investors.

Regarding the rebrand, Tessera co-founder and CEO Andy Chorliyan, in a comment to Decrypt, said that the previous name had not stuck in users’ minds, despite its obviousness.

According to him, this is not merely a name change, but a different approach to collective ownership rights over digital collectibles. In the new iteration of the protocol, the platform intends to offer stakes in the form of actual NFTs.

“One of the important things for us is to truly satisfy our base of collectors and users, and now all these fractions will themselves be NFTs. This will be a much more normal interaction than they expected,” Chorliyan emphasized.

In July, NFT trading volume on the secondary market fell by 26% compared with the previous month—down to $647.2 million.

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