Blockchain and AI development platform EasyA has become the latest technology unicorn after reaching a $1.1 billion valuation, the company disclosed on Wednesday. The bootstrapped firm is now preparing for a proposed public listing.

Founded by brothers Phil and Dom Kwok, EasyA reached the milestone without raising outside funding. In startup parlance, a unicorn is a privately held company valued at $1 billion or more—a status most companies reach only after raising significant venture capital.

The company has grown to more than 1 million users through an app that teaches coding with bite-sized daily challenges and enables users to develop and launch applications directly from their phones. EasyA also runs hackathons where developers and non-coders collaborate on applications and startup ideas.

The founders said they chose to bootstrap the company to maintain control over its direction and long-term vision as they sought to build a leading blockchain and AI developer platform.

“We’ve always had a very clear vision of where we wanted to take EasyA,” Dom Kwok said in a statement. “Investors can provide capital, but they can also change the trajectory of a company and influence how it’s run (not always for the better). Most people raise because they don’t have a business model that can survive without external funding.”

According to an announcement published on Business Wire, the valuation was determined by an independent third-party firm using audited financial statements.

Over the next 12 to 24 months, EasyA plans to tokenize its shares and roll out a suite of AI agents that the company says will offer capabilities beyond those currently available from other providers. Share tokenization has gained traction across the financial industry as firms experiment with representing traditional assets on blockchain rails. With the public listing still at the proposal stage, those plans offer a concrete set of milestones to watch—tokenized shares, the AI agents rollout, and the listing itself—as the company’s stated timeline unfolds.

Kwok noted that blockchain and AI are contributing equally to EasyA’s growth, despite the current wave of attention surrounding AI. He described blockchain as a fundamental technology that could “rewire” the global financial system, adding that EasyA aims to help users discover and make use of emerging technologies.

He added that access to new technology alone is not enough, as many people still need guidance on how to apply it. EasyA’s stated goal is to help users move from learning about emerging tools to actually building with them.

“New technology is getting built all the time, but very few people know how to leverage it to its full capabilities. EasyA’s role in helping distribute and show people what they can do with new technology is vital,” he said.

EasyA works with more than 350 academic institutions, while startups from its ecosystem have a combined valuation of nearly $50 billion and have attracted investment from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Founders Fund and Y Combinator. Its partners include major technology and crypto companies such as Google, Coinbase, Ripple and Solana, among others.

Source: CryptoBriefing