The business exclusively revealed to TechCrunch that Pinata, an NFT-focused video distribution platform, has secured a total of $21.5 million in investment.
The four-year-old corporation has only ever raised this amount of money. According to Kyle Tut, co-founder and CEO of Pinata, the sum comes from a recently finished $18 million Series A and $3.5 million seed investment in 2021. Greylock and Pantera co-led the Series A, while Greylock and Offline Ventures co-led the seed round. Alchemy, OpenSea, and Volt Capital are among other investors.
The company, which has its headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, offers media infrastructure and support for NFT markets, metaverses, web3 apps, and other cryptocurrency initiatives. On any blockchain, including, but not limited to, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, and Algorand, it enables users to manage, distribute, and monetize their material.
Tut stated, “We power a sizable percentage of web3.” “We’re used by some of the greatest names in the industry. These users include both software developers and non-technical artists.
According to Tut, Pinata’s sales growth climbed 42 times over the previous year. According to Tut, since January, the number of users has grown by over 131%, from 104,000 to over 240,000 as of today. The platform is also used by businesses including OpenSea, DraftKings, Protocol Labs, and Yuga Labs.
As you move ahead to the present, you can see that NFTs finally behave as though they are their own apps, according to Tut. Many of these services don’t yet have the capability to provide material to millions of users the way that TikTok or YouTube can.
In a statement sent to TechCrunch, Mike Duboe, a partner at Greylock, claimed that the platform offers an infrastructure for both startups and established businesses to store, maintain, and add more functionality to their NFTs.
Pinata’s ultimate goal, according to Tut, is to provide material at scale for NFT projects who wish to concentrate on developing media and content. The additional funding will be applied to expanding the team’s capabilities and strengthening its infrastructure in order to “power the next generation of NFTs.”
Tut stated, “To us, [the future] looks like full-fledged apps, not simply simple graphics or complicated applications connected with NFTs.
