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Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 Magic Eden has closed a $130M Series B round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock. Microsoft, Meta, Unity, NVIDIA, Sony, and 30 other tech giants have come together to establish the Metaverse Standards Forum.

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Magic Eden closes $130M Series B round

Magic Eden, the leading NFT marketplace on Solana, has raised $130 million at a $1.6 billion valuation.

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The Series B round, announced Tuesday, was co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock, with participation from new investor Lightspeed Venture Partners alongside previous investors Paradigm and Sequoia Capital.

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Magic Eden plans to use the funding to expand its primary and secondary marketplaces, explore “multichain opportunities” beyond the Solana blockchain, and improve its products, among other things.

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“We know that NFTs are the best way to bring people onto the blockchain,” Jack Lu, CEO of Magic Eden, said in a statement. “NFTs are exciting, social and cultural experiences that bring connectivity to the world. We’ve made the conscious decision to support both our creators and users through this tremendous era of growth for both the company and the industry.”

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Magic Eden’s primary marketplace, Launchpad, is home to over 250 projects, while its secondary marketplace accounts for 92% of the ecosystem’s volume, despite OpenSea adding support for Solana NFTs back in April.

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This comes just over three months since Magic Eden closed a $27 million Series A round led by Paradigm with participation from Sequoia, Electric, Greylock, Kindred, Variant, and Solana ventures.

The Waves

⌚ Hublot accepts crypto payments for limited-edition watch

🐕 Elon Musk doubles down on Dogecoin

👀 Moonpay launches NFT platform at NFT NYC

👍 Twitter’s board unanimously approves Elon Musk’s $44B takeover bid

Tech Special

Tech giants join Metaverse Standards Forum

Khronos Group, the multinational tech company behind the OpenXR standard, has brought together Microsoft, Meta, Unity, NVIDIA, Sony, and 30 other tech giants to form a standards group for metaverse tech.

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According to a press release, the Metaverse Standards Forum will focus on “pragmatic, action-based projects,” such as hackathons and prototyping tools, to accelerate the testing and adoption of metaverse standards, while also developing consistent terminology and deployment guidelines.

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Notably, the forum’s main goal is to ensure that a small group of industry leaders does not dominate the development of the metaverse. Instead, Khronos aims for it to be an open, inclusive, and collaborative ecosystem similar to the internet.

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“Industry leaders have stated that the potential of the metaverse will be best realized if it is built on a foundation of open standards,” the group stated. “Building an open and inclusive metaverse at pervasive scale will demand a constellation of open interoperability standards.”

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Amazon reveals new CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores

With Amazon’s former retail CEO, Dave Clark announcing his resignation on June 3rd, the company has finally revealed who will be taking Clark’s position.

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The company announced on its website that Amazon vet Dough Herrington will become the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide stores business.

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Herrington has worked for Amazon for 17 years and has extensive experience in Amazon’s customer business. According to the announcement, Dough Herrington joined Amazon in 2005 and helped the company build out its Consumable business and launch AmazonFresh in 2007. Herrington also led all of the North American Consumer business back in 2015.

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With Herrington stepping in as retail CEO, he has a tough road ahead since the growth of the company slowed down during the pandemic, as well as the company trying to bolster issues within its retail and logistic operations.

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Former Amazon retail CEO Dave Clark’s resignation will be effective on July 1st, and he will be taking over the position of CEO at Flexport, which is a company that produces supply chain software.

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