TL;DR Breakdown
- Dapper Labs is now valued at $2.6 billion following a recent $305 million fundraise.
- The new capital will be used to scale its NBA NFT platform, Top Shot.
Dapper Labs, the company behind Flow blockchain, has been able to secure about $305 million in the latest funding round, aimed at expanding its NBA Top Shot, a marketplace for officially licensed basketball highlight clips known as “moments.” The so-called moments are issued and traded on the platform as non-fungible tokens or NFTs, a concept currently making headlines across several crypto and non-crypto publications.
Dapper Labs now worth over $2 billion
Per the report, the investment round was led by Coatue, a venture capital company. It includes many celebrities, including Will Smith, Michael Jordan, and NBA players like Alex Caruso, Kevin Durant, and many others. The $305 million fundraise comes amid the boom in the NFT market. Hence, Dapper Labs is looking to its NBA Top Shot to include other sports leagues.
The CEO of Dapper Labs, Roham Gharegozlou, commented in the report:
“NBA Top Shot is successful because it taps into basketball fandom – it’s a new and more exciting way for people to connect with their favorite teams and players. […] We want to bring the same magic to other sports leagues as well as help other entertainment studios and independent creators find their own approaches in exploring open platforms.”
A source close to Dapper Labs disclosed this fundraise brings the company’s valuation to $2.6 billion.
NFT is not for artists only
The development today reminds us that the booming NFT market is not limited to digital artists only. Already, musicians, including Rico Nasty, are beginning to rush to digitize and trade their contents as NFTs. Recently, a tech columnist at New York Times, Keven Roose, was able to sell an article as a non-fungible token for over $560,000.
