Crypto Firm Solana Labs Raises $314 Million in Token Sale

(Bloomberg) -- Solana Labs, a developer of decentralized finance projects, raised $314.2 million from investors, including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The funding round was completed earlier this year, according to a statement from Solana Labs, which didn’t provide an exact date. Other investors including Polychain Capital, Alameda Research and CoinShares participated in the fundraising, which was carried out via a sale of Solana coins.

Solana is a challenger to Ethereum for dominance in decentralized finance -- a developing industry within crypto that uses tokens to pay for financial services such as transferring funds. The company said the money will be used to create an incubation studio for applications and platforms on Solana.

Sam Bankman-Fried, chief executive of Alameda and crypto exchange FTX, is a prominent backer of Solana and is developing the Serum derivatives exchange on the network.

The SOL token, which is used on the Solana blockchain, is up more than 6,300% over the past year, according to data from CoinGecko. Bitcoin is up about 250% in the same period, while Ether has climbed about 940%.

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