Cryptocurrency funding may have dipped in the last quarter, but the investors behind the biggest funds in the space are still sticking to their guns.
“There will always be a need for large funds and investors to help startups get the funding they need,” Lydia Chiu, Ava Labs’ vice president of business development, told TechCrunch+. With the current regulatory scrutiny in the space combined with bearish market sentiment, she said, venture capital funds are needed more than ever.
Ava Labs, the company that deployed the first-tier blockchain Avalanche, launched a $200 million investment fund “Blizzard” in 2021 dedicated to growing its blockchain ecosystem. Since then, Chiu said, it’s been a “very busy time.”
In the past year and a half, Chiu said, Blizzard’s fund has invested in about 400 deals across 125 portfolio companies, distributing just over three-quarters of its capital. “We continue to see strong deal flow, and we are actively investing.”
And he’s not the only one: There’s still “a very significant amount of crypto venture money left to be deployed” that was raised two years ago, said Tushar Jain, managing partner at Multicoin Capital. He said Multicoin launched a $430 million fund in 2022, which has since used “less than half of the fund” with “a majority” left to invest.
The remainder of these two funds are only nine digits worth. Considering that crypto fundraising for the first quarter of 2023 was in the billions, the number may seem modest, but out of just two funds, it pays off.
Some of the new boxes are even bigger.