A leading NFT marketplace announced a new funding round Tuesday. Here’s a look at who are the new investors, what the funds will go towards and how much the company is worth.
What Happened: NFT marketplace Magic Eden announced the closing of a $130 million Series B funding round Tuesday. The funding was led by Electric Capital and Greylock. Lightspeed Ventures Partners also joined the round as a new anchor investor. Other investors in the funding include Paradigm and Sequoia Capital, who are previous investors in Magic Eden.
With the new funding round, Magic Eden is now valued at $1.6 billion.
Magic Eden said it has an average of 22 million unique sessions per month and has daily trading activity of around 40,000 non-fungible tokens.
Magic Eden is a leader in the buying and selling of Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) based NFTs.
Related Link: How To Buy Solana
Why It’s Important: Magic Eden said it will use the funds from the round to expand its primary and secondary marketplaces and to “explore multi-chain opportunities.” The company also said it will work on more partnerships with creators and brands.
“Magic Eden’s goal is to define the future of NFTs by supporting the next generation of digital creators and introducing the next billion users to web3,” the company said.
Magic Eden’s Launchpad has helped bring over 250 projects to market, CEO Jack Lu said.
“Magic Eden offers ultimate customization, marketing support and operational execution to new NFT collections coming onto the primary market,” Lu said. “Complementing Launchpad is Magic Eden’s active secondary NFT market, which allows creators and collectors alike to access added liquidity and gain entry to a wide breadth of NFT projects.”
The company’s secondary market also covers over 7,000 collections and makes up over 92% of all Solana NFT volume.
Magic Eden has also expanded into gaming and offers a games-discovery portal called Eden Games. The portal has helped launch over 50 games and metaverse projects.
The new funding round comes as NFT marketplace competitor OpenSea was valued at $13 billion earlier this year. OpenSea also began integrating several Solana NFT projects into its marketplace, which could eat into Magic Eden’s strong leadership position for the Solana blockchain.
