‘We don’t worship at Beeple’s feet’: US$70m buyers of NFT by American artist on their auction success and why they became art investors

Vignesh Sundaresan and Anand Venkateswaran paid US$69.3 million for images stored in a JPEG file which comes with a digital certificate of authenticity

‘Not all 5,000 are masterpieces … This is more about the combined narrative of what Beeple represents,’ Venkateswaran says

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Vignesh Sundaresan and Anand Venkateswaran paid US$69.3 million for a digital artwork, by the artist known as Beeple, stored in a JPEG file. Photo: AP

Published: 10:15pm, 29 Mar 2021Updated: 11:41am, 17 Nov 2021

It took a few minutes for Vignesh Sundaresan and Anand Venkateswaran to realise that they’d parted with US$69.3 million for a digital artwork stored in a JPEG file, coincidentally securing their place in art history.

“We weren’t sure we won,” recalls Venkateswaran, describing the nerve-racking final moments of the online auction for a collage of 5,000 images by the artist known as Beeple. “We kept refreshing the page.”

The March 11 auction at Christie’s in London immediately made Beeple’s artwork one of the most expensive pieces ever sold by living artists, joining a well-known swimming pool painting by English artist David Hockney and an iconic stainless steel rabbit sculpture by American artist Jeff Koons.

Venkateswaran said he and his friend and business partner, Sundaresan, both in their 30s, are still coming to terms with their landmark purchase. They’ve also had to cope with outside concerns that the transaction could have been a convoluted scheme to inflate the value of the pair’s investment portfolio.

Anand Venkateswaran said he and his friend are still coming to terms with their landmark purchase. Photo: AP

That’s because Venkateswaran and Sundaresan have invested heavily in a new form of digital collectable with the unwieldy name of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.