Courtyard, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a physically-backed NFT platform, raised $7M in Seed funding.
The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Y Combinator, OpenSea Ventures, VaynerFund, Brink’s, Cherry Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to help fuel product development, hiring, and expansion within Courtyard’s target market.
Led by CEO Nicolas le Jeune, Courtyard aims to redefine physical asset ownership through Connected Collectibles – a new way of storing and trading physical goods. The company’s blockchain infrastructure allows physical collectibles to be owned and traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for greater liquidity.
Courtyard has partnered with Brink’s, the global leader in total cash management, route-based secure logistics and payment solutions, to ensure the highest levels of security and accountability for physical asset storage. When a customer purchases a physical asset through Courtyard, they receive an NFT complete with a custom 3D rendering of the asset to display in the digital world. The corresponding physical asset gets authenticated, insured and stored in a Brink’s-operated vault. The NFT acts as a digital voucher for proof of ownership and authenticity, and enables the physical asset to be traded without having to be physically moved around or re-authenticated at each sale. At any point, the owner of the NFT can choose to redeem it in exchange for the physical asset.
FinSMEs
02/11/2022