Line Next banks $140m from Peter Thiel-backed Crescendo

Photo credit: Line

Line Next Corporation, a Line unit that focuses on the NFT ecosystem, raised a US$140 million round from a consortium led by Crescendo Equity Partners, a private equity firm sponsored by Peter Thiel.

This is the year’s biggest funding round in the Asian Web3 space, Line Next said in a statement.

With the funds, which come amid a rebound in crypto values, the company plans to grow its global business and create new services as it strives to make Web3 more accessible.

This begins with Dosi, a global NFT platform that Line Next plans to launch in January 2024. A marketplace for digital products that’s integrated with Japan’s Line NFT, Dosi will also let brands directly own existing digital products and trade them.

Another product is a social app that allows users to create characters using AI and use these characters to communicate. Line Next will also introduce new Web3 games using characters from Brown and Friends, original characters created by Line.

These services will be built on Finschia, the public mainnet that succeeds Line Blockchain.

Founded in 2021, Line Next currently has 5.5 million users worldwide and counts more than 470,000 cumulative transactions.

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