Nonfungible token protocol Alethea AI has closed a $sixteen million private token sale to build scalable infrastructure for the NFT marketplace, highlighting once more the growing need for digital collectibles.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban was among the backers of the Alethea AI token sale, which was co-led past Metapurse and Crypto.com Capital. Some of blockchain's biggest venture funds participated in the sale, including Alameda Inquiry, Multicoin, Galaxy Interactive, Dapper Labs, LD Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, Borderless Capital and others. Individual investors included CoinShares' Meltem Demirors and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital.

The funding will go towards building "scalable AI infrastructure for NFTs" that will give digital collectibles more dynamic characteristics, Alethea AI said. The visitor has been working closely with Open up AI to develop its underlying technology. Once complete, Alethea's protocol will enable NFTs to become "interactive media assets, with personality traits, preferences and real-time interactive capability."

After a historic run-up in the showtime half of the year, NFT mania is showing little sign of abating. The latest craze appears to be centered around Ethereum Pet Rocks, which are selling for record amounts. According to industry sources, EtherRock #61 sold for 78 ETH on Aug. 11, which was equivalent to $250,000 at the time. The nearly expensive EtherRock is reportedly going for $1.9 billion.

Before this month, NFT platform OpenSea announced that its gross market volume for the year surpassed $one billion for the offset time. By comparison, the platform generated $24 million in gross volume in all of 2022 and $8 million in 2022. Equally far as NFT sales go, more $2.5 billion worth of transactions were recorded through the first half-dozen months of 2022.

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Venture funds are as well backing NFT protocols and platforms with greater conviction. Equally Cointelegraph reported, several major investors including Pantera, Coinbase Ventures and Sony recently backed a $xxx million Serial A funding round for MakersPlace.