Mysten Labs has raised $300 million at a $2 billion valuation in its latest funding round. The crypto startup firm was, notably, founded by the former executives of Meta’s crypto unit.
FTX leads the funding round; Binance, Coinbase, Circle participate
The funding round was led by FTX Ventures, while the likes of Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, a16z Crypto, Jump Crypto, Apollo, Franklin Templeton, and Lightspeed Venture Partners participated alongside.
Mysten Labs, on its part, is the creator of Sui—a to-be-launched PoS L1 blockchain. Per Wall Street Journal, the firm’s Chief Executive—Evan Cheng—said that the cash infusion will help the company build out the said blockchain. Furthermore, the funding will also be diverted to hire more staff and expand into the Asia-Pacific region.
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Investments, evidently, poured into crypto firms in the first half of this year. As highlighted in an article yesterday, the same stood at more than double than any year before 2021. However, per accountancy giant KPMG, the numbers are set to go down during the second half of the year.
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Mysten executives reportedly started talking to investors for a funding round in May when the crypto market crashed at the time of the Terra debacle. The state of the market further worsened as several companies including the likes of 3AC, Celsius, and Vauld succumbed. Per Cheng, the fundraising process ended up being slower and more challenging because of the same. He added,
“Some investors were not able to come into the round even though they expressed interest in the past or expressed confidence in the company.”
Mysten was founded by alumni of the blockchain and crypto research unit of Meta—Novi Research. Notably, Cheng was the Director of Research and Development at Novi and contributed to developing the Diem blockchain. He had also helped in the development of Move—the coding language Diem and Sui. Other founders of Mysten have also previously worked on Meta’s crypto ambitions.
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