CryptoKitties Rakes In Serious Cash From Venture Capitalist Funding

Dapper Labs, the company behind the extremely popular game CryptoKitties, on Thursday announced that they are receiving some serious funding from venture capitalists.

The Vancouver based company has already received $15 million in this round alone from major investors. The funding is being led by Venrock, which is a venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, California; New York City; and Boston, Massachusetts. Other investors who participated include GV and Samsung NEXT, William Morris Endeavor (WME); eSports leader aXiomatic; and the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund.

This immense investment that is flowing in has almost doubled the company’s valuation since a previous round in March. The company has raised a total of $27.85 million to date. The game has skyrocketed in popularity and has a growing userbase.

Dapper Chief Executive Officer Roham Gharegozolou said in a phone interview.

“Everyone thought CryptoKitties was about buying cats, but it’s only the first step in a bigger vision. We believe that blockchain is going to change the everyday life for everyday people. We see it as a new platform the way social networks were, or the way mobile was a few years ago.”

The game runs on the Ethereum network and it plans to open a Los Angeles-based U.S. subsidiary with the funds received. It also has plans to come up with new games and entertainment apps which will primarily run on blockchain.

CryptoKitties, launched in late 2017, and has done extremely well since then. It is essentially a game that allows people to create digital cats that are treated like collectibles, with some even selling for more than $100,000.

David Pakman, a general partner at Venrock posted a blog in which he said,

“This is an enormously big opportunity and, if successful, may be the second blockchain wave adopted by consumers, buying and trading cryptocurrencies may be fun for some, but crypto goods promises to be waaaay more fun for the rest of us.”