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$300 million is raised by former Meta executives to 'accelerate adoption' of the Sui blockchain
Thirdweb, a Crypto Developer Platform, Gets Katie Haun's Support at a $160M Valuation
A platform for Web3 app developers called Thirdweb raised $24 million in a Series A financing, valued at $160 million. Haun Ventures, the investment company founded earlier this year by Katie Haun, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), served as the funding's principal investor.
Developers that wish to design and securely deploy applications to blockchains and subsequently monitor the associated analytics can use Thirdweb's pre-built, audited smart contracts as a quick start guide. Blockchain games and non-fungible token (NFT) drops are a couple of potential applications.
Former federal prosecutor Katie Haun founded her own business after leaving a16z in December. Haun Ventures quickly established itself as a major cryptocurrency investor after raising $1.5 billion for two new venture funds in March. Two months later, despite the global bear market, her old company, a16z, set new milestones for the sector by committing $4.5 billion to its fourth cryptocurrency fund.
In response to the recent turmoil in the cryptocurrency market, thirdweb co-founder and CEO Furqan Rydhan stated in an interview with CoinDesk, "From our side, we haven't really noticed much of an effect on our clients or the developers constructing these projects." Whether there is a price bear market or not, the fact that we have continued to see great growth and have been able to demonstrate it as part of raising this round is incredibly fantastic.
Web3 development tools
In 2021, Rydhan and Steven Bartlett created Thirdweb. Founder and first CTO of app marketing platform AppLovin, Rydhan now invests in and supports the growth of Web3 startups through Founders, Inc. In addition to being a panelist and investor on the British reality television program "Dragon's Den" (comparable to CNBC's "Shark Tank"), Bartlett launched the social media marketing company Social Chain.
For developers who wish to create Web3 applications for things like NFT projects and marketplaces, we concentrate on a software development kit, said Rydhan. We bridge the gap between the apps themselves and the infrastructure, such as blockchains and node providers.
Global companies including the buy-now, pay-later platform Afterpay and New York Fashion Week have used Thirdweb products, and the business has a collaboration with Coinbase's NFT marketplace. According to the business, over 55,000 developers have used thirdweb tools to create applications within the last nine months.
In a seed fundraising round that included renowned businessmen Gary Vaynerchuck and Mark Cuban last December, thirdweb raised $5 million.
The venture capital arm of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN), e-commerce behemoth Shopify, cryptocurrency developer Protocol Labs, blockchain scaling system Polygon, Shrug VC, and Joseph Lacob, a partner at illustrious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, were among the additional investors in this most recent fundraise.
According to Rydhan, Thirdweb would use the additional funding for product development as well as hiring for its business, sales, and marketing teams. The investment will accelerate support for other blockchains in the near future. The technology now supports a number of blockchains that are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
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