OpenSea recently raised $300m at a breathtaking $13.3B valuation.*. This is up over 10x in less than a year.  Wow. This makes it one of only a handful of private tech companies valued at over $12B, called a “dragon,” by some, including: SpaceX, Stripe, Chime, Plaid.  Pretty amazing list.

So, why is this?

First, their reported financials are amazing, but I’ll let articles speak to those.  As a product, they have become seminal in the NFT marketplace.  If you mint NFTs, or sell NFTs, or buy NFTs, or simply want to see which NFTs you hold, NFT is the site you go to. Yes, there are others, and they all claim niches, but OpenSea is the clear leader in all of these activities, and they undoubtedly have an ambitious roadmap to do even more.

If you’re on crypto-twitter, you’ll notice that there are many minting events, where almost all mintings occur through OpenSea.  Then, any transaction almost always goes through OpenSea where you can see similar NFTs and determine value.  As NFTs become more part of the crypto world, and our everyday world, OpenSea has locked up the marketplace not only for buyers and sellers, but for creators and for viewers too.  Not a bad place to be.  Plus, their financials look pretty good in the articles attached.