New York-based blockchain company, Ava Labs, which leads the development of the Avalanche network, is reportedly raising $350 million at a $5.25 billion valuation.
The latest talks about capital infusion come amidst the market threatening lower price levels demonstrating a modest volume of profit-taking by investors.
- As per Bloomberg’s sources, the new valuation would make Ava Labs one of the world’s most highly valued cryptocurrency startups.
- The company was founded by Cornell computer scientists in 2018. Over the past few years, Ava Labs scored funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.
- Avalanche has positioned itself as a viable alternative to Ethereum, the incumbent leader among smart-contract compatible blockchains.
- The AVAX token has also seen a significant increase in its price and subsequently breached the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. According to the latest data from CoinMarketCap, the asset exchanged hands at $80 after a daily rise of 5%.
- At the backdrop of Avalanche Summit in Barcelona, Darryl Wang, a former investor at the Three Arrows Capital offshoot DeFiance Capital, said, “Avalanche has successfully reached escape velocity.” He also revealed that he had shifted from 100% Ethereum to most other EVM-compatible chains and that 90% of his transactions are on Avalanche.
- Despite supporting a thriving DeFi ecosystem and other smart contract-driven applications, its TVL has cooled down amidst wider choppy market movements. DeFi Llama stats suggest that the total value locked on Avalanche has declined to $14.72 billion as of April 14.
- In addition to DeFi, Ava Labs extended its financial support towards metaverse investments in the network. In collaboration with Aave Companies, Golden Tree Asset Management, Wintermute, Jump Crypto, Valkyrie, and Securitize, Ava Labs recently launched a $290 million incentive program called “Multiverse,” aiming to help develop the subnet functionality on its network.