BAYC Backer Yuga Labs Buys CryptoPunks and Meebits

After 24 hours of rumors and online speculation, Yuga Labs, the company responsible for the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, has acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits from the developer Larva Labs.

Yuga Labs and Larva Labs made a joint announcement on Twitter on Friday evening.

"We now own the brands, copyright in the art and other IP rights for both collections, along with 423 CryptoPunks and 1711 Meebits," reads Yuga Labs' blog post.

Larva Labs says it will retain the rights to its other big non-fungible token (NFT) collection, Autoglyphs, "as well as a group of our favorite Punks and Meebs."

Bored Ape Yacht Club is the most valuable NFT collection in crypto; CryptoPunks are the second most valuable.

Yuga Labs also says it plans to grant the commercial rights to all CryptoPunk and Meebit images to their respective owners. The company has already done this for Bored Ape owners – Yuga Labs owns the Bored Ape Yacht Club, but each token holder is free to monetize their specific ape. Holders have used that idea to spin off their own NFT collections based on particular apes, or to sign their apes with major record labels.

In February, the company was reported to be in talks with the VC powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz about an investment that would value it at around $5 billion.