NFT Genius Raises $10.5M Series A Funding at $150M Valuation (Exclusive)
Quick take:
- The Series A round was led by Dapper Labs, Spartan Labs, Commonwealth Asset Management (CWAM) and Fundamental Labs.
- Funds will be used to go beyond sports and pursue entertainment and cultural deals.
- NFT Genius has partnered with top athletes and artists such as NFT Genius Shaquille O’Neal, golfer Bryson DeChambeau, WNBA’s Kelsey Plum and more.
NFT Genius, a company providing NFT projects and marketplace technology, announced today that it has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding at a valuation of $150 million.
The round was led by Dapper Labs, Spartan Labs, Commonwealth Asset Management (CWAM) and Fundamental Labs, with participation from Spartan, One Football and Unibanco.
In June 2021, NFT Genius raised a $4 million seed round backed by Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou, Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher, and bitcoin attorney Anthony Pompliano, at a valuation of $18 million. The latest funding shows tremendous growth for NFT Genius amid the general market downturn.
NFT Genius was founded by Jeremy Born (CEO), Kurt Braget (CTO) and Karl Meier (managing partner). Born is also the CEO and co-founder of CoinGenius, an analytics platform for cryptocurrency traders. Braget has been in the blockchain and crypto space for over a decade, working on blockchain projects including portfolio apps Blockfolio and Squirrel. Before becoming managing partner and co-founder of NFT Genius, Meier worked with Born at CoinGenius, where he was VP of Marketing and Director of Operations.
Born told NFTGators in an email that the $4 million seed funding was used to build out IPs like the Ballerz NFT collection, which contains 10,000 generative basketball NFTs and debuted on November 8 of last year. The collection sold out in one hour and translated to $15 million in sales, allowing the company to begin the process of building Gaia, an NFT marketplace on Flow.
Gaia serves as the secondary market for sports, entertainment, art and culturally relevant digital collectibles. Powered by Dapper Wallet – the same wallet that powers NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day – the marketplace accepts credit card payments to make it easy for non-crypto natives to purchase NFTs.
NFT Genius will use the new funds to expand its footprint beyond sports and support major entertainment and cultural deals to scale out the Gaia market as it aims to reach the mainstream consumer.
Besides Ballerz, NFT Genius also launched another IP, the Rebel Rabbits NFT collection, as well as trading card sets Bitcoin Origins and Tezos Origins.
Over the past year, NFT Genius has also partnered on NFT deals with top athletes and artists such as Shareef and Shaquille O’Neal, golfer Bryson DeChambeau, WNBA’s Kelsey Plum, Hip Hop Archive and NWA, and Miami Heat’s Duncan Robinson.
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