Pioneering tech platform for building NFT and Web3 apps, thirdweb, has just raised an additional €24 million, taking its valuation to over €159 million. The startup, built by serial entrepreneur Steven Bartlett is now expanding to meet growing demand.
The growth of Web3 has taken the world by storm over the past year. It’s become a growing market and there are no signs of it slowing down. thirdweb offers a game-changing platform that provides a suite of tools for creators, artists, and entrepreneurs to easily build, launch and manage a Web3 project. It’s just closed its Series A round after an exciting first year.
The funding
Announcing a €24 million Series A funding round, thirdweb now has a valuation of over €159 million.
This new round was led by Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Shopify and Polygon. It comes off the back of its €4.9 million seed funding round when it launched in 2021. This was supported by over 20 industry entrepreneurs including Gary Vaynerchuck and Mark Cuban.
Building infrastructure for Web3
Founded in 2021 by Steven Bartlett and Furqan Rydhan, thirdweb is on a mission to provide the infrastructure layer for Web3 – influencing the future of tech development. The platform empowers users to unlock a full stack Web3 development kit to significantly reduce the time and cost required to build and launch applications. thirdweb facilitates the creation of Web3 apps across the most-popular blockchains, including blockchain games, NFT drops, DAOs, token gated membership clubs and more.
What makes the startup stand out is that it enables creators, artists and innovators to build these projects and add features such as NFTs, marketplaces, and social tokens to their Web3 projects without writing a line of code. thirdweb’s intuitive, robust and open-source software is created by top-class engineers, developers and marketers.
Founder Steven Bartlett is a well-renowned serial entrepreneur from the UK. He founded social media marketing agency Social Chain from a bedroom in Manchester after dropping out of uni and has since released a Sunday Times bestselling book (we thought it made for good reading), hosts one of Europe’s most downloaded podcasts The Diary of a CEO (one we recommend listening to)and is the youngest ever Dragon on BBC 1’s Dragon’s Den, representing a new generation of entrepreneurs from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds.
He commented: “Web3 is the most important technological shift I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. We built thirdweb to give the builders that are creating this next iteration of the internet the tools they need to be successful, and when they are successful, the world as we know it will be remarkably different – remarkably better. I don’t think anybody quite realizes how much Web3 is going to change the world.”
Furqan Rydan added: “I’ve built internet companies in Web1 and Web2 and I’m seeing the same patterns in web3 which suggest this is going to transform the internet as we know it. thirdweb is building the infrastructure layer for web3, giving builders the tools to unlock the power of blockchain technology and accelerating them as they build the next world-changing companies. We’re excited to expand our vision further and onboard the next 10 million developers onto web3”.
Scaling up
Thirdweb has been growing at a rapid pace since its launch – thanks to its ability to bridge access to powerful Web3 tools in an inherently fragmented space. In just 9 months, over 55k developers have used thirdweb’s tools to build NFT drops and other web3 applications and over 150k smart contracts have been deployed across 6 different blockchains.
Gary Vaynerchuck, founder and CEO of Vayner/RSE, said: “I backed thirdweb because I believe they have the talent, tenacity and vision to create the infrastructure layer for Web3. Web3 is going to revolutionise multiple industries – thirdweb’s platform will enable that revolution”.
Global brands like 100Thieves, Afterpay and New York Fashion Week are using thirdweb to power their web3 launches. thirdweb also recently announced a partnership with Coinbase’s NFT marketplace to provide the technical infrastructure for their artist’s NFT drops.
This new funding will be used to accelerate platform development to meet increasing demand, add support for additional blockchains and grow the user base by onboarding hundreds of thousands of new brands, individuals and creators, driving mainstream adoption of Web3.
Katie Haun, founder and CEO of Haun Ventures, said: “Our mission is to accelerate the next generation of the internet and we believe thirdweb will play a critical role in realizing that. As complexity to develop in web3 continues to increase, the experienced team at thirdweb led by Furqan and Steven have built an elegant solution that allows developers to build fast while avoiding costly mistakes. I’m pleased to see proven founders of this caliber dedicating their next chapter to crypto and look forward to supporting their efforts”.
