Australian NFT startup Immutable has just received $200 million in new funding that pushes its valuation to $2.5 billion, placing the company among a growing number of NFT-related businesses with valuations exceeding $1 billion. The funding was led by Singaporean state-owned investment company Temasek. Other investors included Mirae Asset, ParaFi Capital, Declaration Partners, and Tencent, according to Reuters. Immutable had previously raised money last year at a $410 million valuation, the company told Reuters.

The Sydney-based company is the developer of NFT-enabled games like Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians. The games incorporate non-fungible tokens to give players ownership over their in-game items. In the emerging sector of play-to-earn games, NFTs are used to represent digital items like an avatar, a sword, or an outfit, the ownership of which is recorded in a publicly-visible ledger called the blockchain. The NFTs can be bought and sold outside of the game by individual owners. Immutable has also created a so-called layer 2 blockchain on which businesses can build games, exchanges, and apps. 

Immutable says it plans to use the funds to expand its operations abroad and for merger and acquisitions. In the next six months the company also plans to expand its 165-person-team by 200 employees, according to CoinDesk. ‘We're excited to raise this capital so we can help deploy it aggressively through M&A opportunities,’says Robbie Ferguson, Co-founder & President, Immutable.