Aptos, the developers of a highly scalable Layer 1 blockchain, have announced they raised $150 million in a Series A funding round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto. The Aptos team plans to use the newly-acquired funds to realize their Aptos Vision, which includes further work on the low latency Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) engine, dedication to Layer 1 scalability improvements, and the launch of mainnet later this year.
Key takeaways:
- The recently concluded Aptos funding round was led by FTX Ventures, a $2 billion venture capital unit launched earlier this year to promote the development of Web3 solutions, and Jump Crypto, a subdivision of the Jump Trading Group. The round saw participation from Apollo, Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, and Circle Ventures as well.
- Aptos was founded by a group of former Meta engineers and leaders working on the social media giant’s Diem and Novi cryptocurrency projects. Meta announced earlier this year that the Diem project, which was initially called Libra, will be shutting down on September 1.
- With the $150 million haul Aptos raised in its funding round, the company’s entire funding amount now stands at $350 million. According to Crunchbase, Aptos raised $200 million in seed financing from FTX, Coinbase, a16z, and others in March 2022.
- According to a press release, the funding came at “a critical time.” Aptos intends to “build the reliable foundation web3 has been waiting for” and enhance Web3’s usability and socialization features.
- Aptos is a highly scalable general purpose Layer 1 blockchain designed to facilitate non-fungible token (NFT), decentralized finance (DeFi), and social media use cases. The mainnnet launch of the Aptos blockchain is slated for later in 2022.
- The Aptos team shared the news about the successful Series A on Twitter, noting how the round was a testament to the team’s expertise and the company’s vision.
