Sources: Yuga Labs, the startup behind Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, is in talks to raise funds from a16z at a $4B-$5B valuation, its first outside funding
NFTs pioneer Yuga Labs seeks $4bn-$5bn valuation from Silicon Valley investor — The start-up behind Bored Ape Yacht Club …
Context & Ripple Effects
In February 2022, Yuga Labs was still fully founder-owned: the Bored Ape Yacht Club shop had just bought CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs (its acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits) but had never taken an outside dollar. The FT's report of talks with a16z at a $4B-$5B valuation marked the moment NFT intellectual property was about to be priced like a venture-backed media company.
The arc since has been a full cycle: the talks closed a month later as a $450M round at a $4B valuation led by a16z, followed by an SEC investigation into whether its NFTs and ApeCoin are securities and, by late 2023, a restructuring with US layoffs. This story is the peak-of-cycle entry point to all of that.
First-order effects
- Yuga Labs would take outside capital for the first time, trading equity near the top of the NFT market while retaining control of BAYC, CryptoPunks, and Meebits — the three most valuable NFT brands.
- a16z would gain the anchor position in the highest-profile NFT franchise, putting mainstream venture capital's stamp on crypto-native IP.
Second-order effects
- Fresh balance-sheet capacity funded aggressive expansion: within weeks Yuga acquired more collections, and by May its Otherside land sale pulled in roughly $320M while congesting Ethereum and spiking gas fees for every other user of the chain.
- Rival NFT projects faced a new kind of competitor — one with venture money to acquire rival collections outright rather than compete mint-by-mint, accelerating consolidation of top NFT brands under a single owner.
Third-order effects
- The SEC's subsequent probe of whether NFTs and ApeCoin constitute securities turned Yuga's fundraising peak into a test case for the entire tokenized-collectibles sector's legal footing.
- When the market cooled, the pattern held in reverse: layoffs, leadership churn, and the quiet divestiture of CryptoPunks showed that venture-priced NFT valuations were cyclical, not structural — a template for how crypto-media companies unwind.
The trend: Venture capital briefly treated NFT collections as platform-scale media businesses, with Yuga Labs' a16z round marking the cycle's high-water mark before regulators and the downturn repriced the category.