Dragons’ Den’s Steven Bartlett gets £20m in funding for blockchain platform
technology platform for building blockchain projects co-founded by Dragons’ Den’s Steven Bartlett has raised $24m (£20m) in a funding round.
Thirdweb — a platform for people and companies to build apps for the “next generation of the internet,” or Web3 — secured the funding from major investors including Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Shopify and Polygon.
The Series A funding round valued the company at $160m (£136m), it announced on Thursday.
Steven Bartlett, who has been the youngest dragon on BBC 1’s Dragons’ Den, co-founded the platform with Furqan Rydhan in 2021.
I don’t think anyone fully realizes how much Web3 is going to change the world
More than 80,000 developers have used the platform, which generates $1.5m (£1.3m) in revenue each week, the company said.
People can use the platform to build non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – tokens on the blockchain that can be used to represent digital objects such as art, collectibles or real estate. They cannot be exchanged like cryptocurrencies as each token is unique.
Global fashion companies have launched their own NFT projects, with sportswear giant Nike selling digital trainers, called Cryptokicks, reportedly raking in more than $185m (£157m) in revenue.
Thirdweb makes it faster and cheaper to build and launch applications on Web3 without having to write a single line of code, the company claimed.
The money raised will be used to accelerate the development of the platform to meet growing demand, add support for additional blockchains, and bring in hundreds of thousands of new brands, individuals and creators, the founders said.
“Web3 is the most important technology shift I’ve witnessed in my lifetime,” said Bartlett.
“We built Thirdweb to give the builders creating this next iteration of the Internet the tools they need to succeed, and when they succeed, the world as we know it will be remarkably different—remarkably better.
“I don’t think anyone fully realizes how much Web3 is going to change the world.”
Crashing cryptocurrency prices have rocked the digital ecosystem in recent months. Bitcoin fell by almost 20% in June after a major crypto lender froze withdrawals and transfers.
While cyrpto-trading platform Coinbase – among the companies leading the funding round in Thirdweb – recently said it would cut almost a fifth of its workforce after sharp price falls and financial losses.
