Maybe Meta Platform Inc.'s abandoned cryptocurrency efforts weren't entirely a waste of time.
After leaving the social networking giant in December, a pair of veterans of its digital currency effort launched a blockchain technology startup called Aptos Labs. On Tuesday — a mere four months later — their company announced that it has raised $200 million in its first funding round and is now worth more than $1 billion.
Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, the CEO and chief technology officer, respectively, of the Palo Alto startup left Meta because it wasn't making progress on its cryptocurrency project, Shaikh told Bloomberg. The following month, Bloomberg reported that the nominally independent association behind Meta's proposed cryptocurrency was winding down its operations.
"We did not feel right that something like this couldn't make its way to market despite all the work that we had done," Shaikh told Bloomberg for its report Tuesday.
The company, legally known as Matonee Inc., is testing its technology, offering early access to blockchain developers, he said in a blog post Tuesday. Aptos plans to publicly launch the service in the third quarter.
The startup is putting a particular emphasis on making its blockchain safe and "production-ready," Shaikh said in a blog post earlier this year.
"While blockchains have come a long way, it is no secret they are still rife with danger and confusion," he wrote. "The decentralization movement struggles to reach escape velocity because reliability, safety and usability can not be taken for granted."
In building its blockchain, Aptos' team tapped into the expertise they developed at Meta, Shaikh said to Bloomberg. Unveiled by the Menlo Park tech giant in 2019 and originally called Libra, that effort involved creating a so-called a digital currency that could be used to buy and sell products both on the company's Facebook service and in the real world.
After changing the name of the project to Diem, Meta backed away from it amid growing regulatory concerns. David Marcus, who headed up the effort for Meta, left the company the same month as Shaikh and Chang.
Aptos is at least the second startup to rise from Diem's ashes. Last year, another group of former Meta cryptocurrency employees formed Mysten Labs. The San Francisco startup announced in December it had raised a $36 million Series A round in a deal led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Andreessen Horowitz also led Aptos' round. It was joined by Multicoin Capital, former A16Z partner Katie Haun, 3 Arrows Capital, ParaFi Capital, Irongrey, Hashed, Variant, Tiger Global, BlockTower, FTX Ventures, Paxos and Coinbase Ventures.
