Bored Ape Yacht Club Owner Yuga Labs Raises $450M Led by A16z

Now valued at $4 billion, the company will use the funds to build out its NFT-based metaverse.

By Eli Tan

Mar 22, 2022 at 8:29 p.m. UTC

Updated Mar 23, 2022 at 11:49 a.m. UTC

Eli Tan

Eli is a news reporter for CoinDesk. He holds ETH, SOL and AVAX.

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Yuga Labs, the company behind the popular non-fungible token (NFT) project Bored Ape Yacht Club, has raised a $450 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

The round, first reported to be in the works back in February, values the company at $4 billion.

The official announcement of the funding caps off what has been a monumental two weeks for Yuga Labs. The company acquired the intellectual property of rival blue-chip NFT project CryptoPunks on March 11, and on March 16 the Bored Ape Yacht Club-linked ApeCoin (APE) token launched by proxy. ApeCoin now boasts a $12 billion market cap, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Yuga Labs says it plans to use the new funding to build out an NFT-based, ApeCoin-powered gaming metaverse called “Otherside.” The company released a trailer video for the project on Twitter days before the funding announcement.

Metaverse investor Animoca Brands, which made its play-to-earn Benji Bananas game ApeCoin-compatible on March 17, also participated in the round.

After the new funding was announced on Tuesday, Andreessen Horowitz changed its Twitter avatar to that of a Bored Ape.

UPDATE (March 22, 20:46 UTC): Added information about Andreessen Horowitz's new Twitter avatar.

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