Microsoft Leads $27M Funding Round for Palm NFT Studio

Microsoft’s venture arm is leading a $27 million bet on NFT studio Palm.

The funding will be used primarily to scale the company’s operations with a slew of new hires, a representative of the studio told CoinDesk.

Palm works with companies and brands to help them create NFT projects, using Ethereum on the backend. It’s exactly the type of blockchain service that Microsoft and its M12 Venture Fund sees potential in – on an enterprise level.

“We’re focused on early stage B2B,” M12 managing director Matt Goldstein told CoinDesk in an interview. “When we look at [Palm’s] pipeline, it’s media brands and art brands and content brands. And those are the relationships that we think are in the best position to help and support the relationship with Microsoft.”

Griffin Gaming Partners, RRE, Third Kind Venture Capital, Sfermion, investment decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) The LAO and Warner Brothers also participated in the funding round, showing the odd bedfellows created by this year’s prolonged NFT craze.

Read more: Who Really Wants Corporate NFTs?

Palm has already collaborated with some big names, including the “Space Jam 2″ NFT collection and an NFT project with comic book staple DC for its DC Fandome 2021 event.

While the current NFT climate values rarity and exclusivity, Dan Heyman, Palm’s CEO, sees value in NFTs as a way for brands to build community within their audiences.

“Within three years, most NFTs will be given away for free,” Heyman said in a press release. “We will see a shift away from NFTs as exclusive collectables toward mass community engagement, and Palm NFT Studio is leading that evolution.”