Corporates Tencent, Animoca Brands, Alameda Research, Prosus and Liberty Global all took part in a $200m series C round for Immutable, an Australia-based developer of non-fungible token (NFT) processing technology, yesterday.
Singaporean state-owned investment firm Temasek led the round, which also featured financial services group Mirae Asset, ParaFi Capital, Princeville Capital, Arrington Capital, King River Capital, AirTree Ventures, Declaration Partners, Fabric Ventures and Possible Ventures.
Mass media company Liberty Global, internet and gaming group Tencent, blockchain entertainment app developer Animoca Brands and quantitative trading firm Alameda Research each invested directly while internet holding group Prosus did so through its Prosus Ventures unit. The round valued Immutable at $2.5bn.
Immutable has built a liquidity protocol for the Ethereum blockchain network, enabling developers of NFT apps, games and marketplaces to process functions much more quickly, hypothetically saving energy in the process.
The technology enables companies to mint, distribute and trade NFT assets on a large scale without paying gas fees – the fee ordinarily levied on each Ethereum transaction.
The NFT market reached an all-time high in January this year. Although it dipped by about a third last month, the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea, still recorded $3.65bn of trades on Ethereum and its Polygon sidechain alone.
Animoca Brands co-founder and chairman Yat Siu said: “We are thrilled to double down on our partnership with Immutable. We are excited to explore integrations with Immutable X across Animoca’s portfolio of content – bringing next-level scale, security and liquidity to the next generation of blockchain games.”
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase had joined Nirvana Capital, Continue Capital and Sora Ventures in the company’s $1.8m seed round in 2018. Prosus Ventures predecessor Naspers Ventures led its $15m series A the following year, investing with Galaxy Digital’s EOS VC Fund and Apex Capital Partners.
Immutable subsequently added $60m in a September 2021 series B round co-led by Bitkraft Ventures and King River Capital that included Alameda Research and VaynerFund.
The news comes after Immutable formed a fund with video game retailer GameStop last month that will finance developers of NFT content, investing a total of up to $100m in the form of its IMX tokens.
Photo courtesy of Art Rachen via Unsplash.
