Canada-based photo catalogue platform developer Unsplash has received $7.3m in a series A round led by blockchain and cryptocurrency technology provider OST.
The round also featured venture capital firms Real Ventures and Accomplice, startup studio Betaworks and an assortment of private investors. OST supplied 80% of the $5m it invested as cash and the rest in the form of its cryptocurrency, the Simple Token.
Unsplash operates a community-orientated online photo repository with more than 300,000 high-resolution images that are free to use without attribution. It ranks images depending on how frequently they appear on platforms such as Google Slides, InVision and Medium.
The company is still in negotiations with potential investors and could close the round at up to $10m, according to TechCrunch. Jason Goldberg, OST’s chief executive, will join Unsplash’s board of directors.
OST and Unsplash plan to use blockchain and cryptocurrency technology to develop a new financial model for online photos, whereby photographers will be paid in cryptocurrency, according to Unsplash founder and CEO Mikael Cho.
“It will be a model that leverages the unprecedented distribution Unsplash photos gain to bring as many opportunities to contributors as possible while maintaining the open, free-to-use principles of the community,” Cho said in a blog post.
Unsplash has not disclosed any earlier equity funding, though it did raise $107,000 in a Kickstarter campaign in 2015.