Fractional Re-brands to Tessera, Raises a $20M Series A Investment led by Paradigm

NFT platform Fractional today revealed that the company has changed its brand name to Tessera in addition to raising a $20 million Series A investment. Similar to the startup's seed round from the previous year, Paradigm led the round, which also included more than 50 individual angel investors including Uniswap Labs Ventures, Focus Labs, eGirl Capital, and Yunt Capital.

Tessera, which was first known as Fractional and co-founded by Andy Chorlian in 2021, is a platform that enables users from all over the world to come together and jointly own some of the most sought-after non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and projects.

NFT collections on Fractional include Pudgy Penguins, Cool Cats, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and CryptoPunks.

“As we grow into this next phase, the name Tessera feels more representative of our platform, which is all about giving people the ability to collect things they love and identify with,” said a Tessera spokesperson.

The platform's original name, according to Andy Chorlian, was "obviously very on the nose." The name reflects the idea of fractionalizing an NFT, or selling tokenized shares in an NFT so that hundreds or even thousands of people can collectively own a portion of something, which had advantages at first, he claimed.

The term, however, was never fully stuck in the minds of the NFT owners; Chorlian predicted that people would refer to it as Fractionalize, Fractal.art (the name of its domain), or even Fractal, the name of another NFT game platform based in Solana. However, the rebrand involves more than just creating a distinctive brand. It also involves broadening the pitch to include collective ownership.

‍“What we really want to do is find unique and interesting ways to empower people online—and particularly on the blockchain—to collectively own things together,” said Chorlian.

The current Fractional platform has already been used for a number of well-known projects. For instance, a DAO by the name of PleasrDAO paid $4 million for the internet-famous original Doge meme picture, which served as the inspiration for Dogecoin.

Other notable Fractional projects include UkraineDAO, which earlier this year generated $6.75 million in ETH for rescue efforts in Ukraine, and Free Ross DAO, which raised money for the legal defense of imprisoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. The platform has also been used for a community ownership initiative by the popular NFT project Azuki.

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