Massive Raises $11M to Change How Internet Users Pay for Premium Content

Massive, an Internet startup based in Claymont, has raised $11 million in seed funding to allow internet users to pay for premium content by sharing idle processing power.

The round was led by Point72 Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, BlockTower Capital, and CoinShares Ventures. Several angel investors like Ryan Selkis of Messari, Prabhakar Reddy of FalconX, Sriram Krishnan of Kearny Jackson, and Packy McCormick of Not Boring also joined. The total funding raised by Massive is now $12.5 million, having previously raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding.

Adam Carson, Operating Partner and Crypto Investing Ñead at Point72 Ventures, will be joining Massive’s board of Directors. He referred to the founding round by stating:

“Massive is unlocking an entirely new payment method for digital goods and services where users can pay with their device’s idle compute power. And for application developers, Massive is pioneering a new way to monetize users to complement existing business models of paywalls, in-app payments, and advertising. We are thrilled to support their vision of bringing Massive to billions of users around the globe.”

Massive was founded back in 2018 with the mission to develop a new business model for the internet by replacing the traditional ad or membership-based model. For this purpose, the startup created an SDK that developers can use to allow their visitors to share spare computing power in exchange for premium features, content, or services. Jason Grad, Massive’s co-founder and CEO, said about this approach:

“We believe Massive will become a widely used monetization method for application developers and the most powerful distributed supercomputer in the world. We couldn’t be happier to welcome this group of investors who will help us create a new payment standard for the internet.”

Requiring internet users to pay for a membership or deal with ads has been the approach traditionally used to generate revenue on the internet. However, these can either be too disruptive or result in users not consuming content/services at all, which affects all parties involved. By allowing the sharing of idle processing power, Massive can generate revenue by mining cryptocurrency, hosting blockchain infrastructure, and performing computing tasks, all while removing the need for memberships or adds.