NFT (non-fungible token) development platform Pixel Vault has closed a $100 million funding round, the startup announced on Wednesday.
- The company said that the investment by Velvet Sea Ventures and 01A would enable it to launch a “multi-franchise NFT development platform,” enabling creators and collectors to own digital content.
- “Pixel Vault projects are built with the key tenets of Web 3 at the center – community empowerment, decentralized governance and true digital ownership,” Pixel Vault founder and CEO Sean Gearin said in the announcement.
- Pixel Vault went live last May with a release that included real and digital comic book characters from the CryptoPunks project. The company has a large collection of superhero and villain NFTs that it hopes to develop into a decentralized, studio-scale entertainment enterprise. It is also the creator of the MetaHero Universe, a social and gaming platform.
- The funding will support the development of projects across television, movies and video games, the company said.
- Pixel Vault said it has generated almost 100,000 ether ($286 million based on ether’s current price) in primary and secondary transactions.
- ”Intellectual property is the product,” Velvet Sea partner Michael Lazerow, who will join the Pixel Vault board, said in the announcement. “And Pixel Vault is building it in close partnership with its engaged community of avid collectors, of which I am a proud token-carrying member.”
- O1A is the venture capital firm founded by former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and former Twitter Chief Operating Officer Adam Bain.
- Velvet Sea and O1A co-led a $25 million Series A fundraising round in NFT marketplace Autograph, which last month closed a $170 million Series B round that was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Kleiner Perkins.
UPDATE (Feb. 2, 2022, 17:16 UTC): Adds bullet point on Velvet Sea and O1A co-leading Series A round for Autograph.