BAYC secures a monster round lead by A16z

Yuga Labs does it again.  The creators of BAYC, Kennel Dogs, Mutant Apes, and acquirers of Crypto Punks and Meebits made news recently with the launch of $APE and the announcement of the future metaverse (with an additional 10k avatar project embedded) have just closed a funding round that values the company at around $4 Billion dollars in fiat.

Other participants in the round include   Animoca Brands, LionTree, Sound Ventures, Thrive Capital, FTX and MoonPay as well as celebrities and fashion brands including Vaynerfund, Adidas Ventures, Dez Bryant, Shaq, Snoop, Timbaland, Steve Aoki, 3LAU, and more.

Their next step is the launch of their metaverse that is rumored to be priced between 1-3 ETH and available to purchase using $APE token.  Based on leaked reports earlier this year the Land sale, now known as the Otherside will likely be released in 2 installments. The first of which will be sold in April.  Rumors also include free claims for the BAYC (and MAYC) as well as the crypto punks.  According to those leaks the team was looking to raise around $400m from that sale. It will be interesting to see if those leaks were accurate (as everything else appears to be).  Other considerations for their metaverse include how functional it will be at launch.  The team has been working on creating 3d versions of the avatars for some time and since they have openly partnered with Animoca Brands, we suspect that the universe will be at least playable in some form at launch.

We will share more details as they arise but be on the look out for many more announcements related to both the funding round and the $APE coin in the near future.