Yuga Labs, the startup behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, is in talks with venture capital heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) over a funding round that would give it a valuation as high as $5 billion, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
- Yuga Labs is in talks about selling a multimillion-dollar stake with a16z among the firms it is courting, the Financial Times said, citing people with knowledge of the discussions.
- Bored Ape Yacht Club, a collection of 10,000 algorithmically generated images of cartoon apes minted and sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Ethereum blockchain, counts a score of celebrities as owners, including Paris Hilton and Steph Curry.
- Rapper Eminem recently bought one on OpenSea for 123.45 ETH ($319,000).
- Previously an early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb and Stripe, a16z has invested extensively in the cryptocurrency industry, recently telling investors it is looking to raise $3.5 billion for a new crypto venture fund.
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