Avalanche Developer Ava Labs Raise $350 Million At $5.25 Billion Valuation

Avalanche developer, Ava Labs, is raising $350 million at a $5.25 billion valuation, according to reports.

According to Bloomberg, the new valuation would make Ava Labs one of the world’s most highly valued cryptocurrency startups.

In the past few years, Ava Labs has raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, and Polychain Capital, with angel investments from Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant.

The company has positioned itself as a seriously taken rival to Ethereum, the leader among smart-contract compatible blockchains.

The native token AVAX has also been performing well in the market and firmly sits among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. At the time of writing, AVAX trades at $77.61.

Darryl Wang, a former investor at the Three Arrows Capital offshoot DeFiance Capital, said:

“Avalanche has successfully reached escape velocity.”

He also revealed that he had shifted from 100% Ethereum to most other EVM-compatible chains and that 90% of his transactions are on Avalanche.

Despite supporting a thriving DeFi ecosystem and other smart contract-driven applications, its TVL has cooled down amidst wider choppy market movements. According to DeFi Llama stats that the total value locked on Avalanche has declined to $10.4 billion as of April 14.

Together with Aave Companies, Golden Tree Asset Management, Wintermute, Jump Crypto, Valkyrie, and Securitize, Ava Labs recently launched a $290 million incentive program called “Multiverse,” aiming to help develop the subnet functionality on its network.