Blockchain Company Mural, Founded by Palantir Alums, Raises $5.6M
Blockchain startup Mural, founded by alumni of publicly traded data analytics software company Palantir Technologies (PLTR), has raised $5.6 million in seed funding at an undisclosed value to help global brands manage the treasuries behind their decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). .
“We are now seeing a new wave of DAOs being spun up by many of the world’s leading brands,” Mural Chief Product Officer Kevin Alvarez Fung told CoinDesk in an interview. “They see the value of DAOs just as they saw the value of e-commerce in the early 2000s, as a mechanism to better digitally engage their customers.”
Fung previously worked in product management at SoftBank-backed financial technology company Digits, but New York-based Mural has strong ties to Palantir, which was founded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Mural CEO Sinclair Toffa and co-founder and chief technology officer Arthur Kam both worked at Palantir as technical managers and engineers. Mural also named Robert Fink, former chief architect of Palantir’s flagship Foundry product, as one of its founding advisors.
Mural launched on Tuesday with the funding news and an initial group of brand partners that included Superf3st, a community-driven music festival from the creator of popular festivals Outside Lands and Bonnaroo.
Mural creates financial infrastructure related to decentralized autonomous organizations, blockchain-supported communities that come together around a common interest. DAO users purchase some type of token, often non-fungible tokens (NFT), in branded communities to participate and vote. The income goes to a community fund which is used for operations and investments in desired projects.
DAO treasury management is difficult for even smaller niche communities. And brands forming a DAO must deal with security, transparency and regulatory compliance issues for large treasuries that can handle tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, Fung said. Mural is building a financial management platform that helps brands manage their own currency flows and specific needs such as milestone-triggered payments.
Backers of the funding round include investment firm Galaxy Ventures, CoinDesk’s parent Digital Currency Group, venture firm Firstminute and Palumni, the Palantir alumni venture capital fund.
The new capital will go toward hiring talent, building out the product and forming new brand partnerships, Toffa said.
Mural isn’t the first time Palantir alums have raised funds for a Web3 company. Blockchain analytics company Elementus President Greg Barbaccia and Chief Strategy Officer Chitra Ragavan both worked at Palantir, and the company raised $12 million last October shortly after being named to Palantir’s Foundry for Builders program. A crypto-focused version of Foundry was released in 2021.
