OpenSea Co-Founder Alex Atallah to Leave Company End of July

Alex Atallah, co-founder of OpenSea, the largest web3 marketplace for NFTs and crypto collectibles, announced on July 2 that he would step away from the company on July 30, but will remain on the company’s board. Atallah said he is ready to turn his attention back to his primary passion: building something from zero to one.

Atallah graduated from Stanford and worked as programmer at Palantir and two startups before co-founding OpenSea with Devin Finzer in 2017. OpenSea is an American online non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace headquartered in New York City. After a 2018 pre-seed round with Y Combinator, OpenSea raised $2.1 million in venture capital (including from Animoca Brands) in November 2019.

In 2021, following a heightened interest in NFTs, the company’s revenue reached $95 million in February 2021 and $2.75 billion in September of that year. By January 2022, the company had been valued at $13.3 billion and is often considered to be the largest NFT marketplace.

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According to Atallah’s announcement, next week, Marko Iskander will join OpenSea as the new Vice President of Engineering. Since January of this year, after the company’s Dharma acquisition, part of Atallah’s role has been leading OpenSea’s ecosystem efforts across the NFT Security Group and OpenSea Ventures. Kevin Pawlak will continue leading OpenSea’s venture arm and infusing the rest of the company with strategic insights.