Digital Art Platform and Residency Program Wildxyz Raises $7M

Digital art platform Wildxyz has raised $7 million in seed funding to expand its residency program and community surrounding non-fungible token (NFT) art, the company said Thursday.

The round was led by venture capital firm Matrix Partners, with participation from notable investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman; actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow; the co-founder of Twitch, Kevin Lin; and NFT investor Cozomo de Medici.

Wild plans to put the funding towards its hyper-curatorial residency program, which onboards artists in “seasons'' to create art for its native marketplace. Douglass Kobs, CEO and founder of Wild, told CoinDesk that its goal is to help artists build bodies of Web3 work to collectively contribute to the “Wildverse,” the platform’s native metaverse.

“We deem the future to be much more immersive, much more experiential, driven by AR and VR innovation,” said Kobs, referring to augmented reality and virtual reality. “What we're building at Wild is a collection of some of the most creative humans on planet earth who are building this new surface area of experiential art that we can all play with, interact with, engage with and build community within.”

Wild kicked off Season 0 in November 2022, a 12-week program culminating in an NFT drop in January 2023 from participating artists including Hideo, Mitchel F. Chan, Aluna, Sasha Belitskaja, Auguste Wibo and others.

“The Wild Residency is an incredible opportunity for artists to share creativity, ideas, and energy,” said Chan. “The program has created meaningful connections in my art practice that will continue to shape my career.”

While Wild holds weekly sales of its residency artists’ work, it also offers Wild Oasis, a founder’s pass that allows community members to bid daily on NFTs, starting at a price of 0.1 ETH or about $160.

“What we try to do is build this ecosystem in this community for all the artists to do their best work, and to learn from one another,” said Kobs. “The program is an effort to guide them to be successful in Web3.”

Since the start of 2023, several platforms have emerged that empower artists to explore digital creativity while executing the mint and sales of their work. In January, the former head of digital at Gagosian launched Tonic.xyz, a generative art platform and gallery. This week, Solana-based digital art platform Exchange.art spun off to create Code Canvas, a generative art marketplace and artist community.

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