Palo Alto, California-based Aptos Labs has quadrupled its valuation since March, after Binance Labs—the venture capital arm and accelerator of Binance—made a new, undisclosed strategic investment in the Web3 infrastructure firm.
The follow-on investment was announced by Binance Labs in a blog post. It did not disclose the amount of the follow-on investment, but a Bloomberg report said the new money gives Aptos a valuation of more than $4 billion.
Binance Labs specifically noted Aptos’ use of the programming language Move to build its blockchain as part of the reason for the investing arm’s interest in the startup. Move is said to allow for faster transaction execution and a safer user experience.
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“We believe that the technological competitiveness of the Aptos team could bring increased scalability to the blockchain infrastructure while also supporting novel use cases for Web3,” said Yi He, co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs, in the blog.
Big money
Aptos, founded by ex-Meta employees, is creating a Layer 1 system blockchain, meaning it will not sit on Ethereum or another network, but be its own decentralized network. The company is looking to build off of key elements of the Diem blockchain and its smart contract language, Meta’s Stablecoin project that was shuttered earlier this year.
The new round is just the latest raise by the Layer 1 blockchain Web3 company. It was just in mid-March when Aptos closed a $200 million investment from Tiger Global, Coinbase Ventures and FTX Ventures, and valued the company at more than $1 billion. Aptos then closed a $150 million Series A in July, also led by FTX Ventures, along with Jump Crypto. Binance Labs took part in the July round, which valued the company at more than $2 billion.
Layer 1 blockchain startups continue to capture investors’ imagination—and money.
It was just last week when Palo Alto, California-based Mysten Labs closed a $300 million Series B at a more than $2 billion valuation. The new round was led by FTX Ventures.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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