OpenSea Valued at $13.3 Billion as Ethereum NFT Market Booms Again

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, revealed that it had raised $300 million in a Series C fundraising round, valuing the company at $13.3 Billion. Venture firms Paradigm and Coatue lead the round. The company was valued at $1.5 billion as recently as July 2020.

The money will be used to scale up product development and hire more staff, as well as improve customer support and help grow the  NFT and Web3 market, according to OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer.

"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."

Announcing Series C! We’re building the friendliest & most trusted NFT marketplace with the best selection across many chains. The funding helps us accelerate product development, improve trust & safety, and invest deeply in the web3 community & ecosystem. https://t.co/OmRPleMCOX

— OpenSea (@opensea) January 5, 2022

Shiva Rajaraman, a former Facebook executive, recently joined OpenSea as its new VP of Product. Rajamaran's responsibilities will include assisting the company in supporting NFTs from other blockchains (such as Solana's NFT) and connecting customers to tools for finding digital art and managing their collections.

Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam tweeted that the OpenSea founders "have shown true grit over the last four years, weathering uncertainty and sticking to their vision of NFTs as an internet- and world-changing primitive."