Former Meta execs raise $300M to ‘accelerate adoption’ of Sui blockchain

Mysten Labs, the company behind the yet-to-launch layer-1 blockchain Sui, has raised $300 million aimed at building core infrastructure and accelerating the adoption of its Sui blockchain ecosystem.

The blockchain company, which was founded by former executives of social media giant Meta in 2021, said in a Thursday announcement that it landed $300 million in a Series B funding round led by crypto exchange venture arm FTX Ventures.

: Today, we’re excited to announce our $300M Series B funding round. This milestone signals the technical strength & immense potential of our Sui ecosystem. #Suinami 1/ pic.twitter.com/wQ8WH1egyY
— Sui by Mysten Labs (@Mysten_Labs) September 8, 2022

Other Series B investors included Coinbase Ventures, Jump Crypto, Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, Circle Ventures, Binance Labs and O’Leary Ventures, among other investment funds and partners, with the new capital valuing the company at over $2 billion.

In addition to equity, investors will receive warrants for native tokens to be traded on the future blockchain.

Mysten is the creator of the Sui blockchain, a proof-of-stake (PoS) layer-1 blockchain that uses a feature called “transaction parallelization” to achieve high throughput, low latency transactions and low transaction fees, which may give existing blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana a run for its money.

Mysten co-founder and CEO Evan Cheng said the new funding would be used to build its technology, the company’s hiring efforts and expansion to the Asia-Pacific region.

“This new funding will enable Mysten to continue to scale Sui, and we are grateful for the support from blue-chip investors and strategic partners who are aligned in our mission.”

Cheng suggested that current Web3 infrastructure “is in the dial-up era,” noting:

“It’s slow, expensive, capacity constrained, insecure, and simply hard to build for.”

The latest funding suggests that some venture capital investors remain unphased by the crypto bear market. A recent report from Messari revealed that $30.3 billion in funds was invested by VC firms in the first six months of this year, outpacing the entire fundraising year in 2021.

Last December, Mysten Labs raised $36 million Series A funding, led by a16z.

The company was founded in September 2021 by former cryptographical program engineers behind Meta’s crypto-payments platform Diem and mobile wallet Novi. Mysten Labs is led by CEO Evan Chang, chief technology officer Sam Blackshear, chief product officer Adeniyi Abiodun and chief scientist George Danezis.