A Layer-1 blockchain developed by former figures at Meta’s failed Diem crypto project is to receive $150 million of investment.
Aptos Labs was founded by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching. It uses Diem’s programming language, Move, which aims to make transactions cheaper and more efficient.
It is targeting sectors including gaming, social networks, media & entertainment, and finance.
The round was led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, and included new investments from Apollo, Griffin Gaming Partners, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures, Superscrypt (founded by Temasek). It also saw continued support from a16z crypto and Multicoin.
According to Bloomberg, the funding round has more than doubled Aptos Labs’ valuation, which was already above $1 billion in March.
“This funding comes at a critical time in our industry. At Aptos, we are taking this as an opportunity to build the reliable foundation Web3 has been waiting for,” wrote the founders on Medium.
“This team has spent years building and battle testing world-class technology that will dramatically elevate the usability and socialisation of Web3. We are working with our strategic partners to identify consumer needs, and address them by shipping the most performant and upgradable blockchain technology.
“We’d also like to thank our Aptos community for the support over the past seven months as we’ve hosted hackathons, reached 20,000 operational nodes during devnet, launched our series of incentivised testnets and raised total funding of $350 million to strengthen this evolving community.”