Braintrust web3 job platform raises $100 million in private token sales

Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith details a recent round of fundraising for Braintrust, a blockchain-powered freelancer marketplace that connects tech experts with clients.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yahoo Finance's David Hollerith is here with a story about a new freelance platform that's looking to unseat older gig marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr. David, what have you got for us?

DAVID HOLLERITH: Yeah, so the talent network Braintrust announced on Thursday, yesterday, it raised $100 million from investment management firms, Coatue, Tiger Global Management, and others. And I kind of wanted to point this out because sort of what they're doing is a part of a larger investing trend that people have talked about called Web3. And so Braintrust brands itself as a gig marketplace that currently caters mostly to IT workers.

And in the last 18 months, they're still somewhat small, but they've seen pretty significant growth. Their gross sales volume, 2,250% from $1.2 to $28.2 million. They have over 474 companies that used their platform, and that includes Fortune 100 companies, such as Goldman Sachs, Nike, Black & Decker, Porsche, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Nestlé. And there are a number of workers has grown tremendously. They're currently sitting around 37,500 workers, who are using the platform. And as you'll see on the graph, that's sort of November numbers, but this is the most updated version of it. So it's up 94%.

Now the interesting thing here is that unlike, say, an Upwork or even an Uber or a DoorDash, the way this works is that Braintrust is a nonprofit. So they effectively kind of work like a co-op, if that makes sense. And they have created a crypto token. This is sort of the crypto side of it. And the crypto token is used to sort of incentivize people who might be on the platform as recruiters or employers to help do work to build the network. So a lot of the margin that sort of an Upwork might normally take is sort of cut down significantly.

So, essentially, the idea is that workers make more money, and employers have to pay less for jobs. So it seems like a win-win. But I just wanted to point out this trend because, you know, people come on the show all the time. They talk about Web3, this is sort of an example of that. And the venture capitalists are also sort of getting involved, too. Now they've bought-- this entire raise they've done is by buying the company's tokens, BTRST, which is, it's listed now as actually seeing a 5% rise. So it's interesting. This is, like, a co-op business model. It might undercut a little bit, but it's something to keep watching.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, thanks so much for that wrap-up. David Hollerith, we appreciate it.