AVA Labs Raises $12M In Private Token Sale, Prepares Public Offering

AVA Labs has raised $12 million in a private sale of its AVAX token in anticipation of its mainnet launch, scheduled for later this summer, the firm said in a blog post on 25 June.

According to the announcement, the sale was co-led by major industry players, namely Galaxy Digital, Bitmain, Initialized Capital, NGC Ventures and Dragonfly Capital, and also saw participation from “dozens of other individuals”. The firm also noted that it will be conducting a public offering to accredited U.S. investors and non-U.S. citizens, which will last for two weeks, starting 8 July.

The president of AVA Labs, John Wu, said in a statement:

“We have purposefully and deliberately established our entire project, structure, and token distribution to deliver fair and open access to the Avalanche network. We’re excited to have private sale participants that are committed to supporting Avalanche, and building an internet of finance driven by and for its community.”

The planned public sale will be conducted in accordance with U.S. federal financial regulations, meaning investors have to either be an “accredited investors” as defined by Rule 501 of Regulation D, or a non-U.S. person as defined by Regulation S of the Securities Act. Through the public sale, investors will be purchasing the rights to own a certain amount of AVAX tokens, which will be distributed during the network’s mainnet launch later this year.

Being the native token of the Avalanche platform, AVAX has a capped-supply limit of 720 million tokens, 50 percent of which will be issued during the mainnet launch. Though it is not pegged to any asset, the token will be used to secure the network through staking, pay for network fees, and also provide a basic unit of accounting for the AVA’s subnetworks.

Including this private sale, the total amount of funds raised by the Avalanche Foundation to date is around $18 million. Founded by Cornell Professor Emin Gün Sirer in 2019, AVA Labs closed a $6 million Series A funding round back in February 2019, which saw participation from prominent venture firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, and investors like Balaji Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant, among others.

The private token sale also follows the successful launch of AVA Labs’ Denali Testnet, which was the final incentivised testnet before the official launch of the network’s mainnet. According to the firm, the testnet attracted more than 1,000 AVA followers, who were given the opportunity to earn up to 2,000 AVAX tokens for onboarding as validators. The firm has claimed that Denali has reached 1,000 full block-producing nodes, which were “actively staking and participating in the consensus protocol”.