The rumor mill has been working overtime lately, and this time it’s been churning out some juicy gossip about Pudgy Penguins allegedly acquiring NFT marketplace OpenSea. Word on the street had it that the deal was already sealed by December 2024, oh, how the digital world loves a good speculation!
But hold your horses, folks. Beau, the head of security at Pudgy Penguins, wasn’t having any of it. In a post on X this Saturday, he firmly shot down the talk. “Pudgy Penguins didn’t buy OpenSea… chill,” he wrote, making sure to cool down the overheating chat.
Pudgy Penguins didn’t buy Opensea… chill.
— Beau (@beausecurity) July 26, 2025
The scale of things planned for the Penguin is so large that you need not speculate on a single acquisition.
Instead talk about partnering with Lufthansa and NASCAR, and go find the next great brand for us to proliferate with. pic.twitter.com/78ZmUZOyLe
He went on to remind everyone that Pudgy Penguins has plenty of big plans in the pipeline, so focusing on a single acquisition wasn’t exactly the main event.
“ Instead talk about partnering with Lufthansa and NASCAR, and go find the next great brand for us to proliferate with,” he added.
Rumors Fuel Speculation, Beau Stays Focused on Future
For those not in the know, Pudgy Penguins is a collection of 8,888 flightless bird NFTs that launched in July 2021. Since then, they’ve spread their wings into the world of physical products, with their own Pudgy Toys line, thanks to a partnership with PMI Toys. Holders of the NFTs even get a chance to profit from commercial use through the OverpassIP platform. So yeah, acquiring OpenSea? Not exactly at the top of the to-do list right now.
But where did these rumors even come from? Well, it seems that OpenSea’s CEO, Luca Netz, made a now-infamous comment back in October 2024 about wanting his company to be acquired by Pudgy Penguins. That, combined with some coincidental timing in Pudgy’s December announcements and OpenSea’s shifts around token support, had Twitter buzzing with theories about a quiet acquisition. But once again, Beau wasn’t having it.
“I don’t actually think acquiring OS rn would make a lot of sense for us,” he said.
Fair point. Focus on what’s confirmed, right?
Pudgy Penguins Leans into Partnerships, Not Acquisitions
Meanwhile, Pudgy Penguins has been playing the long game with some serious brand partnerships, including collaborations with Lufthansa and NASCAR. Oh, and don’t forget their recent launch of Pengu Clash, a skill-based Web3 game on The Open Network (TON) blockchain. Clearly, they’re more into forging new paths than buying marketplaces.
NFT Market Rebounds
In other news, the NFT market is on a bit of a comeback tour. With a 94% jump in market cap to $6.6 billion in July (according to DappRadar), things are looking up for the NFT space. Trading volumes spiked 51% week-over-week, marking the strongest performance since February. And leading the charge? None other than the Ethereum-based CryptoPunks collection. Their floor prices jumped a solid 53%, and within 24 hours on July 22, they saw 83 new purchases and a 15.9% increase in floor price, reaching nearly $180,000 per Punk. Now that's a rebound!
So, while Pudgy Penguins isn’t busy buying OpenSea, it seems like it’s got its eyes set on much bigger—and much more exciting—things in the NFT world. Stay tuned, folks.
Gunel Ismayilova
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