Global leading footwear and apparel giant NIKE on Monday announced the acquisition of Adrian Cheng’s C Ventures-backed virtual shoe studio RTFKT.
The financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed. With the acquisition, RTFKT becomes a part of the NIKE family, according to its official website.
Earlier this year, C Ventures made a significant investment in RTFKT’s seed funding round, which totalled $8 million. C Ventures had earlier this year also joined the $100-million funding round for Singapore-based digital asset platform Matrixport.
RTFKT utilises next-generation technology including blockchain authentication, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), game engines and augmented reality to create sneaker and digital artifacts.
“This acquisition is another step that accelerates Nike’s digital transformation and allows us to serve athletes and creators at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming and culture,” said NIKE president and CEO John Donahoe in the statement.
The Nike investment will support RTFKT to broaden its team of creators and artists, develop new NFT collections and grow the talent pool.
RTFKT was co-founded in January last year by Benoit Pagotto, Chris Le and Steven Vasilev. Last March, in partnership with crypto-artist dubbed FEWOCiOUS, RTFKT sold out the sneakers in seven minutes and generated as much as $3.1 million.