Avalanche’s Ava Labs Closes in on $5 Billion Valuation

Ava Labs is seeking a $5.25 billion valuation, making it one of the biggest crypto startups in existence.

In a report from Bloomberg, anonymous sources said that the company is in the middle of a $350 million capital raise in a campaign that hasn’t been announced publicly as of yet.

Ava Labs’ big valuation is on top of Avalanche’s $21 billion market cap, with AVAX currently priced at $75.32.

AVAX has garnered attention as one of the main smart contract platform competitors to Ethereum, offering faster and cheaper transactions with support for a diverse set of applications.

In September of last year, Avalanche raised $230 million via a private sale of AVAX tokens, in a round led by crypto investment giants Polychain and Three Arrows Capital.

“Despite being years younger than its peers, Avalanche has quickly turned promise and potential into real-world impact and value creation for DeFi users and developers,” said Emin Gün Sirer, director at the Avalanche Foundation. “The community of builders rallying around the network is a testament to its competitive edge, and there is still so much potential yet to be tapped at the intersection of institutional and decentralized finance on Avalanche.”

“We are pleased to support Avalanche as the platform continues to grow its vibrant community of open source developers,” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, Founder and CEO, Polychain Capital. “We look forward to seeing the next generation of applications launching on the platform.”

In addition, Terra's algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem chose Avalanche over Ethereum to partially back its stablecoin reserves. Terra's Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) added roughly $100 million in AVAX to its UST reserves, temporarily boosting the price.