Roc Nation boss Jay-Z has expanded his business portfolio and is now an investor in the NFT platform Bitski’s Series. Roc Nation’s co-founder Jay Brown, music industry executive Troy Carter, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, and 3LAU are also among the list of investors in the $19 million fund. Serena Williams, Wendi Murdoch, and executives at TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, 100 Thieves and Adobe have invested in Bitski as well.
The San Francisco startup describes itself as the “Shopify for NFTs” and aims to provide a friendly platform for brands, game developers, and consumers to create, buy, and sell digital products.
Bitski previously teamed up with Adidas and 2021 NFL Draft No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence to drop an NFT collection of 3D animated trading cards. Bitski has also partnered with World Wrestling Entertainment to release an NFT featuring The Undertaker in the past. Bitski revealed the news on Twitter on Thursday, May 6, announcing its investors and the amount raised.
“We’re excited to announce our Series A raise today. Bitski is grateful to be backed by a brilliant team of investors that support our relentless efforts to evolve the way we interact with digital content,” the company tweeted.
In related news, it looks like Hov is about to go full steam ahead into the movie and television game as well. According to TMZ, Jay-Z recently filed a trademark through S. Carter Enterprises for the name “2/J” under the category of “entertainment services in the nature of creation, development, and production” for television programming, movies and similar projects.
Shawn Carter’s previous footprints in television included documentaries on Kalief Browder and Trayvon Martin. Jay-Z was a producer on “Time: The Kalief Browder Story,” a six-part docuseries chronicling the life of Browder after he was incarcerated at Riker’s Island, exposing numerous flaws in the criminal justice system. He also served as an executive producer of “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story,” a docuseries chronicling the life and death of Trayvon Martin and the early stages of the Black Lives Matter movement.
