FC Basel owner Holzmann and Tioga Capital lead $5 million round into NFT startup

Dan Holzmann, co-owner of Swiss football club FC Basel, and venture capital firm Tioga Capital have led a €5 million ($5 million) round for NFT startup Exclusible.

CEO Thibault Launay declined to share its valuation. Founded only last year, Exclusible is an NFT platform that works with luxury brands to develop their digital asset offering counting clients such as Asprey Bugatti, Christian Lacroix and Louis Monet.

Along with the funding announcement, the Lisbon-based company also announced that it’s making a push into America through an acquisition of U.S. company Polycount, a metaverse development studio that has worked with Mcdonalds’ and NBA team Utah Jazz.

Exclusible’s Launay did not share the full details of the acquisition deal but said it was a mixture of cash and shares.

“The Polycount team has established itself as one of the top Metaverse creative solution providers in the world. Exclusible, the leading luxury, best-in-class NFT/Metaverse development, marketing, and management team is the perfect match, said Polycount CEO Michael Potts in a statement. «The partnership of Exclusible and Polycount will bring together two world class teams knowledgeable, talented, and innovative in the Metaverse, Web 3.0, and XR space.»

One of the ways it plans to use the new funding is to hire talent to build out its web3 customer relationship management product, said Launay in an email. According to a pitch deck shared by the CEO, this will allow companies using the service to acquire customers, encourage brand engagement and access on-chain data and analytics when selling or distributing NFTs.

The news follows other startups in the NFT space raising capital from investors in the last month.

Earlier this month, NFT startup Otterspace raised $3.7 million in a round led by Cherry Crypto and Inflection. Last week, Multicoin backed college sports fan platform Mercury for $7.5 million, which offers sports-themed NFT drops.

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