🌊OpenSea Valued at $13.3 Billion as NFT Market Continues to Grow

The leading NFT marketplace OpenSea announced Tuesday it has raised $300 million in a Series C funding round and is now valued at $13.3 billion. The round was led by venture capital firms Paradigm and Coatue.

KRH, the new fund from former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun!  a16z participated in both the Series A and Series B, and Haun holds a board seat on OpenSea.

OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer said the money would be used to ramp up product development and hire more staff while improving customer support and helping grow the larger NFT and Web3 space.

“Our vision is to be the destination for these new open digital economies to thrive," Finzer said in an emailed statement. "We’ll start this year by lowering the barriers to entry to the NFT space on OpenSea and investing in the ecosystem and the community that powers it.”

As recently as July 2020, OpenSea was valued at $1.5 billion after a Series B round that brought in $100 million. In November, The Information reported that it was set for a $10 billion valuation from its Series C.

The $13.3 billion figure OpenSea is reporting today demonstrates the growing appeal of NFTs—blockchain-based deeds of ownership to digital items. OpenSea has hosted some of the most popular Ethereum-based NFT collections in the space, including Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks.

OpenSea's monthly volume has continued to impress, months after many declared non-fungible tokens a fad back last June, when the initial frenzy cooled. In August, the NFT market caught fire again, and in December OpenSea registered its second-largest month ever with $3 billion worth of Ethereum NFTs trading hands.

It hasn't slowed down in the new year so far. It had its third-best trading day ever on January 2 with $243 million in Ethereum NFT volume.

Opensea is also the largest NFT marketplace, in terms of all-time sales, as the company has recorded $14.68 billion in sales across 1,387,357 traders worldwide. Sales are up more than 25% during the last 30 days with a recorded $2.91 billion in volume. The $14.68 billion in sales is a lot larger than any other NFT project or market.

“This quarter, we are launching a grant program to give us the opportunity to directly support the developers, builders, and creators shaping the future of the NFT space,” Finzer said in a statement. “Our ambition is to foster the scale and growth of the broader NFT ecosystem including raising the profile of emerging creators and investing in the people who shape the NFT space for the better today.”

NFTs have certainly made a splash and entered the mainstream cultural conversation in 2021. In the coming years, we'll see whether one site that sells them is worth $13+ billion.

🌏Disclaimer: Some members of our team, including editors of this article, have personally invested in a number of cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and DAOs. We also earn commissions on some of the products we recommend.