Ava Labs Seeking a $5B Valuation Following a $350M Funding Round: Bloomberg

Ava Labs, the blockchain startup that is in charge of the Avalanche blockchain network has raised the sum of $350 million in a funding round per a Bloomberg report.

Per Bloomberg’s anonymous sources close to the transaction, the company’s valuation will top $5.25 billion should the deal be finalized and it will further position the startup as a viable alternative to Ethereum in the race to dominate the Web3.0 space.

Avalanche is largely considered one of the fastest blockchain protocols in terms of time-to-finality. The blockchain has had a very impressive year, one which may be further capped should the $350 million capital injection be confirmed. 

As a growing smart contract supporting protocol, there are more than 250 applications running atop it, with an ultimate focus on gaming, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

As an Ethereum killer, Avalanche, like its other competitors including Solana and the BNB Chain, seeks to create a platform where transactions can be very cheap, and completed at the speed of light.

Founded in 2018 by Cornell University Professor Emin Gün Sirer, Avalanche has raised at least three different funding rounds with the latest being the $230 million raised from token sales last year with participation from investors ranging from Polychain Capital and Three Arrows Capital among others.

Ava Labs Seeking to Power Ecosystem Growth

While the Avalanche protocol was developed as a very scalable platform, it is not operating at par with its capabilities at present, and the Ava Labs team is determined to change the narrative moving forward.

One of the ways the startup is doing this is through Blizzard, an ecosystem fund with $200 million in initial capital to support projects building on its infrastructure it floated back in November last year.

As Gün Sirer noted at the time, the crypto industry has experienced unprecedented growth in the past months, and “Blizzard will play a key role in further accelerating this growth, and solidifying Avalanche’s position as the premiere home for projects and people pioneering the next era in our space.”

A number of active players in the payment and digital currency ecosystem, such as Mastercard, are also recognizing the uniqueness of Avalanche and are identifying with its growth. As reported by TheCoinRise, Voyager Digital is one of these firms, and it integrated Avalanche’s staking, NFT, and DeFi apps to its platform in Q4 last year.