Mojito, which lets clients like Sotheby's sell NFTs from their own storefronts or websites, raises $20M at a $100M valuation
Context & Ripple Effects
Mojito's $20M round lands two days after Animoca Brands raised $65M at a $2.2B valuation for letting players own in-game items as NFTs, capping a year in which NFT infrastructure became one of crypto's hottest funding categories. The pitch here is different from consumer platforms: Mojito supplies the back-end so institutional clients like Sotheby's can sell NFTs under their own brand, on their own sites.
It also steps directly onto turf staked out in May, when Bitski raised a $19M Series A led by a16z to build custom NFT storefronts for brands and creators — making branded storefront infrastructure a two-horse race at this point in the cycle.
First-order effects
- Sotheby's and similar institutional clients get a turnkey way to run NFT sales on their own domains rather than routing drops through third-party marketplaces.
- Mojito gains the capital to scale its white-label stack at a $100M valuation — a fraction of Animoca's $2.2B, reflecting its narrower B2B position.
Second-order effects
- Bitski now faces a well-funded rival chasing the same brand-and-auction-house clientele, pushing both toward deeper integrations with marquee names like Sotheby's to win exclusivity.
- Auction houses and brands gain negotiating leverage over NFT marketplaces, since the storefront layer they need can now be sourced from dedicated infrastructure vendors.
Third-order effects
- If branded self-hosted storefronts become the default, value in the NFT stack migrates from consumer marketplaces to the B2B infrastructure providers beneath them.
- The valuation gap also cuts both ways: The Block itself was valued at $70M when it sold an 80% stake in 2023, a reminder that crypto-sector marks set during this funding wave did not hold.
The trend: NFT spending is rotating from consumer marketplaces toward picks-and-shovels infrastructure vendors that let established brands sell digital assets under their own names.