FTX Helps Raise Crypto Startup Mysten Labs Valuation to $2B

Cryptocurrency startup Mysten Labs has raised $300 million, bringing the valuation of the firm to more than $2 billion.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (Sept. 8), the funding round was led by FTX Ventures and will allow Mysten — founded by former executives from Meta’s crypto business — to hire staff and expand into the Asia-Pacific region.

The report notes that Mysten executives began speaking with investors in May while the collapse of the Terra and Luna tokens erased $40 billion in market value and kicked off a massive drop in the price of crypto.

CEO Evan Cheng said that meant fundraising ended up taking much longer and posing more of a challenge.

“Some investors were not able to come into the round even though they expressed interest in the past or expressed confidence in the company,” he said.

Read more: Crypto Winter Begins to Thaw As VCs Re-Enter Market With Scaled-back Bets

Mysten was founded by veterans of Novi Research, Meta’s blockchain and crypto research unit.

Cheng, who was Novi’s director of research and development, helped create the Diem blockchain and Move programming language, the Journal report said.

PYMNTS reported last month that while retail investors had shied away from crypto as prices plummeted, there has been a marked lack of pullback from venture investors.

That includes some gargantuan new funds, such as the $4.5 billion crypto fund Andreessen Horowitz debuted in May, with $3 billion earmarked for venture investments and the remainder for seed funding.

FTX Ventures was also part of that group, with a $2 billion fund, along with Andreessen Horowitz veteran Katie Haun’s $1.5 billion Haun Ventures raise in March and Electric Capital’s $1 billion raise (between two funds) in February. Meanwhile, July saw Multicoin Capital announce that it will be moving another $430 million into crypto startups.

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