Meta-related Blockchain Startup Raises $36M from Andreessen Horowitz

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Venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has invested $36 million in startup Mysten Labs, founded by former employees of Meta (formerly Facebook).

According to a16z, Mysten is building a “fundamental Web 3.0 infrastructure” to address scalability issues and accelerate the development and deployment of decentralized services.

Evan Cheng is the CEO of Mysten Labs – in 2018, he moved from his position as head of engineering at Facebook to the position of director of blockchain engineering.

He was joined by former company engineers Sam Blackshire and George Danezis, as well as Novi Project product manager Adeni Abiodun. Cheng told the CNBC:

“We are building an infrastructure that our previous research has shown will overcome many constraints.”

Earlier, the head of Meta’s payments division, David Marcus, announced his departure from the company. In 2018, he led a new blockchain research group, and a year later took the helm of the new project Libra (later Diem).

a16z led last month the Serie A funding round of NFT music platform Royal for $55 million.