YugaLabs Raised $450 Million for Metaverse Project Dubbed “Otherside”

Earlier this week, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs announced that it was able to raise $450 million in funding from an Andreessen Horowitz seed round raising its valuation to $4 billion. The team had not previously raised funding, but it has been attempting to draw the attention of venture capitalists for quite some time. Among the investors who joined the round includes Animoca Brands, LionTree, Sound Ventures, Thrive Capital, FTX, and MoonPay.

“To me, Yuga Labs, combined with these other emerging [Web3] companies, are an important counterweight to companies like Meta,” explained the founder and leader of Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm Chris Dixon. “There’s a dystopian future where Meta is this kind of dominant digital experience provider, and all of the money and control goes to that company.”

According to Yuga Labs, the funds it has acquired will be utilized to establish its own games to expand its reach in the NFT industry. It hopes to build momentum on its MMORPG metaverse project called “Otherside” with the aim of creating a “gamified” and “completely decentralized” that boasts interoperability, said BAYC co-founder Wylie Aronow. “We think the real Ready Player One experience will be player run.”

Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz furthered that the company will enter into partnerships with “a few different game studios” in an effort to see its metaverse project through. “We’re opening the door to effectively a walled garden and saying ‘Everybody’s welcome’,” added Muniz, noting that the project will not be limited to Bored Ape owners. The creation of development tools has also been planned that will allow other NFTs to work inside the world of Otherside.

Within this month alone, the company likewise announced its acquisition of Larva Labs’ assets which consists of other prominent NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Meebits. Additionally, Yuga Labs launched its own ApeCoin over the past week which gathered a multibillion-dollar market cap on its first day of trading.

While several metaverse projects are currently being developed, Yuga Labs is confident that it will stand out among the crowd precisely because of how Otherside will turn out. “You only play with people and make friends because you’re getting your ass kicked,” furthered Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano. “Basically, we don’t think deep social experience comes from essentially a Zoom chat and walking around saying ‘hi.'”

A timeline regarding the release of Otherside is still yet to be released, but the company is also working on putting out a play-to-earn game later this year. Despite its lack of experience in building an NFT game, Yuga Labs has been fairly successful in terms of its financials. Dixon also added that “they built this very energized community and this culture phenomenon,” which is most likely what drew investors to the company.

Sources: The Verge, TechCrunch