The startup behind Bored Ape Yacht Club is reportedly in talks with Andreessen Horowitz for funding at a $5 billion valuation

• Yuga Labs is in talks with Andreessen Horowitz for a funding round that would value it at up to $5 billion, per The Financial Times.
• A deal would mark the first institutional investment in the team behind the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
• Bored Ape Yacht Club was the top-selling NFT collection last week, with $182.4 million in sales.

The startup behind the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token collection is in talks with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) for a funding round that would value it at up to $5 billion, according to the Financial Times.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 digital images of cartoon apes with various attributes like hats or glasses, and count the likes of rapper Eminem, NBA star Steph Curry, and late-night television host Jimmy Fallon as owners.

Yuga Labs is currently discussing selling a multimillion-dollar stake to venture capital giant a16z, among other firms, according to the FT. Any deal would signify the first institutional investment into Yuga Labs and signal its role as a major player in the growing world of digital collectibles.

The NFT space is headlined by a handful of key players that have released the most sought after collections. Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs saw 2,083 sales over the previous seven days for a total of $182.4 million — the most of any NFT collection.

Despite a brutal start to 2022 for the cryptocurrency market, NFTs continue to boom. In the past week alone, NFT sales hit $926 million, according to data from NonFungible.com. Last year, total NFT sales volume surged to $14 billion.