OpenSea made headlines in 2018 for many good reasons. In the beginning, OpenSea was a major NFT marketplace and processed $700M in volume trading in its first three days in 2022.

OpenSea announced Tuesday evening that its investors had valued the company at $13.3 Billion in a Series A funding round. The company was valued at $1.5 billion six months ago, when it received $100 million in Series B funding.

Paradigm and Coatue led the latest round of $300 million in capital. It cements the ubiquitous NFT platform’s place as one of the most valuable private firms in the crypto sector. Furthermore, Tuesday’s big number shows how fast OpenSea has grown to become the largest marketplace for digital collectibles.

As for the funds, OpenSea said it plans to channel the capital towards startup investments, product development, hiring, and to “significantly improve customer support and customer safety.”

NFT has had a particularly successful year in terms of business. BTC PEERS reported that OpenSea experienced a 600-fold increase in trading volume over the past year. The platform closed last year with an incredible $14 billion trading volume. In the past 30 days alone, the OpenSea’s market for high-coveted profile pics and other NFTs logged 1.6 million transactions that generated $2.4 billion in trading volume.

While OpenSea’s latest round and valuation is a testament to the booming crypto sector, there have been bigger valuations in recent months. During FTX’s funding round in October, for instance, the crypto exchange was valued at $25 billion. Retrospectively, more than $30 Billion was invested in crypto startups by 2021.

OpenSea is still the undisputed leader in the NFT market. In September, Dapper Labs was another player and firm behind NBA Top Shot. It was worth $7.6 Billion in an round led by Coatue.

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