Last Updated on November 15, 2022 by Bitfinsider

The creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Yuga Labs, is not done expanding. After acquiring the CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT project intellectual property from Larva Labs in March, the startup announced today that it had purchased Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann’s NFT startup WENEW.

Since its introduction in June 2021, WENEW has collaborated with a variety of brands, including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Playboy, and the Wimbledon tennis championship. The company is particularly well-known for 10KTF, an Ethereum NFT project centered on a fictional tailor who manufactures digital clothing for other high-value profile picture (PFP) projects, like Bored Apes.

Yuga Labs has purchased the startup and will appoint Michael Figge, co-founder and CEO of WENEW, as Chief Content Officer. Beeple, who is most known for selling a single piece of NFT artwork at auction in March 2021 for $69.3 million, will act as an advisor to Yuga Labs.

10KTF is a narrative-driven NFT project centered on a fictional “digital artisan” named Wagmi-san, who creates special clothes that owners of popular PFP projects, such as the Bored Apes, Cool Cats, Nouns, and Moonbirds, can have applied to their NFT artwork. Additionally, owners can order clothes based on their PFP artwork.

10KTF has previously collaborated with clothing giants such as Gucci and Puma on digital fashion. Yuga Labs has already hinted that Wagmi-san will be incorporated into Otherside, its next Bored Ape-centric metaverse game.

Three co-founders of Yuga Labs criticized OpenSea’s attitude on creator royalties in a blog post with 10KTF CTO Randy “Melonpan” Chung last week, prior to the acquisition news. The day after the post was uploaded, OpenSea reversed its position and stated that it will continue to pay royalties on secondary sales.