Minteo Secures $4.3M For Operations Expansion With OpenSea

Latin America-based Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Minteo raised $4.3 million in a seed round. The seed round received support from OpenSea Ventures, the venture arm of the world’s largest NFT marketplace. 

Other investors in the round were Fabric Ventures, Dune Ventures, CMT Digital, Impatient VC, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, SevenX Ventures, FJ Labs, Big Brain Holdings, G20 Ventures, Zero Knowledge, Alliance DAO, and AngelDAO. Notably, some angel investors backed the round.

Minteo which is located in Colombia plans to use the fund to expand its team and operations and stimulate growth in the company.

Invariably, the Minteo NFT marketplace intends to leverage the spiking adoption rate of NFTs in the Colombian region. Minteo’s $4.3 million round goes further to emphasize the growth of Web3.0 and blockchain technology in the region.

Is Minteo a Direct Competitor of OpenSea?

Taking cognizance of OpenSea’s participation in the seed round,  Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder of Minteo William Durán declared that the company is not a direct competitor of the global NFT market leader OpenSea. Even though technically, OpenSea would compete with Minteo. He further explained by saying, 

“On OpenSea there’s a bunch of categories, it’s hard to navigate and unless you’re in the top collection it’s hard to reach an audience if you’re a creator. We’re trying to simplify the user experience from the infrastructure part, while making it easier for them to access local content on mobile.”

The founders of Minteo plans to make the marketplace stand out amid other NFT platform by putting up advanced infrastructure. Also, the firm plans to collaborate with local brands and artists among its other agendas. 

“The idea is to work with top artists in the region, the top 40-50 artists in each country,” Durán said. “They don’t necessarily have to be involved with NFTs yet, this can be their gateway into it and we want to help artists get into NFTs.”

The global NFT market leader OpenSea recently partnered with renowned music and entertainment company Warner Group (WMG). The terms of the agreement stated that opens a will “provide a platform for select WMG artists to build and extend their fan communities in Web3” under the new agreement.