Dapper Labs, the Vancouver, BC, Canada-based company behind NBA Top Shot and the new Flow blockchain, closed a $305M funding round.
The round, which brings the total capital raised to date to $357m, was led by Coatue with participation from NBA legend Michael Jordan as well as current players and funds including Kevin Durant, Andre Iguodala, Kyle Lowry, Spencer Dinwiddie, Andre Drummond, Alex Caruso, Michael Carter-Williams, Josh Hart, Udonis Haslem, JaVale McGee, Khris Middleton, Domantas Sabonis, Klay Thompson, Nikola Vucevic, Thad Young, and Richard Seymour’s 93 Ventures, as well as Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Will Smith and Keisuke Honda’s Dreamers VC, Shawn Mendes and Andrew Gertler’s AG Ventures, Shay Mitchell, and 2 Chainz, a16z, The Chernin Group, USV, Version One, Venrock, MLB players like Tim Beckham and Nolan Arenado, NFL players Ken Crawley, Thomas Davis, Stefon Diggs, Dee Ford, Malcom Jenkins, Rodney McLeod, Jordan Matthew, Devin McCourty, Jason McCourty, DK Metcalf, Tyrod Taylor, and Trent Williams, Vivek Ranadive (Kings), and Bolt Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to scale the team to continue building out the NBA Top Shot vision, expanding the platform to other sports, and enabling a new generation of creators develop engaging experiences using blockchain technology including NFTs.
Led by Roham Gharegozlou, CEO, and Dieter Shirely, CTO, Dapper Labs is the company behind CryptoKitties and the Flow blockchain. It operates NBA Top Shot, one of the world’s fastest-growing marketplaces, with nearly $500m in collectibles bought and sold, more than 800,000 registered accounts, more than 338,000 customers with at least one NFT, and over 3m transactions, less than five months into its open beta.
NBA Top Shot is based on Flow, an open source blockchain developed by Dapper Labs and launched in 2020. Flow enables NFT marketplaces and other decentralized applications that need to scale to handle mainstream demand without high transaction costs or environmental concerns.
Joining the NBA, other cultural leaders currently building experiences on Flow include Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, Warner Media, and the UFC, as well as thousands of third party developers, artists, and other creators. Products already live on Flow mainnet include Viv3, an art marketplace where visual artist Ben Mauro instantly sold out of $2 million in collectible cards; Blocto, a non-custodial wallet solution; and MotoGP, which held its first sold out drop last week.
FinSMEs
30/03/2021