Brian Roberts, who recently resigned from Lyft after spending 7-years as the company's Chief Finance Officer (CFO), is joining the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea as its CFO.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Roberts, who previously worked at Microsoft and Walmart, said that the growth of web3 companies and, of course, OpenSea has made this jump into crypto an easy choice.

“I haven't been this excited about something in a very long time,” he said. “It reminds me of 1995 eBay.”

Founded in 2017, OpenSea has exploded into popularity as non-fungible tokens mania took crypto mainstream.

In August, the marketplace topped $3.4 billion in volume, up from less than $100 million just a month prior, according to Dune Analytics. However, since then, the volume has been in a continuous decline, to record $2.37 bln in November though up from just $4.5 million in Nov. 2020.

As we reported last month, OpenSea has been getting new investment offers that could increase its valuation to as much as over $12 billion. OpenSea founder and CEO Devin Finzer confirmed that the company is talking to investors about raising additional funds and is currently determining what type of investor it wants to bring in the company, as per a Bloomberg report.

This year, OpenSea raised $100 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in a Series B round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz in July, leading its Series A in March.

According to Roberts, OpenSea is already profitable. “I've seen a lot of P&Ls, but I've never seen a P&L like this,” he said.

While OpenSea doesn't need to raise more cash, Robers said, the new financing can be used to acquire companies, ink partnerships, and create joint ventures to expand the use of NFTs into new industries.

Roberts, known for guiding Lyft through its rapid growth to a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) and adjusted profitability, also said he's already planning OpenSea’s IPO.

“When you have a company growing as fast as this one, you'd be foolish not to think about it going public,” he said. It “would be well-received in the public market given its growth.”

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