Florida-based non-fungible token (NFT) platform Recur announced it has received backing from Steve Cohen, owner of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, in its US$50 million series A funding round.
Fast facts
- The financing round, which valued Recur at a US$333 million post-money valuation, was led by Digital, a metaverse investment platform backed by Cohen’s family office. Cohen, who recently founded Digital, will also serve on Recur’s board as part of the deal.
- Cohen is an American investor and hedge fund manager who founded Point72 Asset Management. His personal net worth is estimated to be around US$16 billion.
- Recur is building blockchain-based brand experiences that will allow fans to buy, collect, and re-sell NFTs on any blockchain or NFT marketplace, essentially creating a decentralized recurring royalty program. To do this, Recur signs licensing agreements with brands, allowing it to create NFTs based on their intellectual property. Recurring royalty means that each time an NFT is sold or exchanged, a certain amount of royalty will be paid to the creators. For instance, if A buys an NFT from B, who bought it from C, the brand that created the NFT will receive a fee for both transactions. In other words, it is a way for brands to continue to earn over time from their digital collectibles.
- “At Recur, we are building a future where NFTs can be taken anywhere as tokens of personal expression, community membership, and fandom, among so many other use cases,” Recur co-founders Zach Bruch and Trevor George said. “Our goal is to give fans the opportunity to own pieces of the stories and IPs they love, with real value retained across any future chain.”
- The latest funding announcement comes after Recur raised US$5 million seed money in March, a month after the platform was launched. Recur counts some popular names in its list of investors including media marketing expert and serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, the Winklevoss twins who founded crypto exchange Gemini, singer and songwriter Jason Derulo, and Scott Belsky, the founder of portfolio platform Behance now owned by Adobe. Recur will use the current funding to expand its team and launch brand experiences on the market next year.
- In addition to its funding, Recur also announced deals it signed with Collegiate Licensing Co., an artificial intelligence company Veritone, the exclusive content licensing partner for the Pac-12 Networks, an American sports-oriented digital cable and satellite television network. The deal will help Recur create NFTs based on memorable sports highlights of Pac-12 which will be part of a new website, NFTU.com — a platform that Recur hopes will feature additional college sports collectibles in the U.S.
