Bored Ape Creator Yuga Labs Acquires Beeple’s WEEW, 10KTF NFT Project

Bored Ape Yacht Club Creator Yuga Labs isn’t done expanding. After buy CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT project IP from Larva Labs in March, the startup announced today that it has acquired NFT startup WEEW, co-founded by famed artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann.

WENEW has followed a series of brand collaborations since will be launched in June 2021, including with Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Playboy and the Wimbledon tennis tournament. The startup is also known for 10KTF, an Ethereum NFT project built around a fictional tailor who creates digital clothing for various high net worth profile picture (PFP) projects– including Bored Apes.

Yuga Labs has acquired the startup and will add WENEW co-founder and CEO Michael Figge as its new Chief Content Officer. Beeple, meanwhile – which is best known for selling a single piece of NFT artwork for $69.3 million at auction in March 2021 – will act as an advisor to Yuga Labs.

10KTF is a story-driven NFT project built around a fictional “digital craftsman” named Wagmi-san, who develops custom outfits as owners of popular PFP projects – including Bored Apes, but also Cool cats, Noun, Moonbirds, and others – may have applied to their own NFT artwork. Owners can also order physical clothing based on their PFP artwork.

Clothing brands such as Gucci and Puma have previously done digital fashion collaborations with 10KTF. Yuga Labs have already teased a sort of implementation of Wagmi-san in his upcoming Bored Ape-centric metaverse game, The other side. A Yuga Labs representative told Decrypt that the terms of the agreement are not made public.

An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership of a unique item, often for digital goods such as profile pictures, artwork, and collectibles. Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most successful projects in the area, generating nearly $2.5 billion in secondary sales to date, according to data from CryptoSlam.

Last week, before the acquisition announcement, three co-founders of Yuga Labs signed a blog post with 10KTF CTO Randy “Melonpan” Chung criticizes NFT marketplace OpenSea’s stance on creating royalties. The day after the post was shared, OpenSea changed course and said it will continue to honor royalties on secondary sales.

In March, following the news that Yuga had acquired CryptoPunks and Meebit’s IP, the startup announced that it had raised $450 million at a $4 billion valuation.

One of Yuga’s backers was FTX Ventures, which went down in flames last week when the popular cryptocurrency exchange collapsed in the middle of a liquidity crisis. On Friday, Yuga co-founder Wylie “Gordon Goner” Aronow arrived tweeted that the FTX collapse “has not affected us”, and that it previously removed funds it had in FTX US.