Funding Wrap: Venture Capitalists Continue to Prioritize Web3

Web3 startups continued to be an area of focus for investors this past week.

Cryptocurrency venture capital firm Symbolic Capital, led by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, raised a $50 million venture fund to support building Web3 companies.

Along with Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Cere, Symbolic Capital wants to use its newly raised funds to back consumer-facing decentralized apps. It has previously invested in gaming studio BlinkMoon and other Polygon-based platforms.

On the other side of the world in Japan, Animoca Brands KK also raised a significant amount of money — $45 million — to support Web3 and NFT efforts in the country. 

The latest capital will also be directed into securing licenses for intellectual property (IP) of popular anime and manga series and increasing the value and utility of the company’s branded content.

Estonian crypto startup focused on cryptocurrency options trading, BITLEVEX, secured $50 million from GEM Capital, an alternative investment group that has poured millions of dollars into Web3 companies this past month.

GEM Capital previously committed $50 million to decentralized farming protocol XION Finance and $25 million to Geeq, a multi-blockchain platform that uses a patent-pending blockchain consensus mechanism.

Web3 developer platform thirdweb also locked in a significant amount of cash from investors this week, closing a $24 million Series A led by crypto investment firm Haun Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Shopify, Protocol Labs, Shrug VC and Joseph Lacob. 

Katie Haun, founder and CEO of Haun Ventures, said in a statement that she hopes that the firm’s investment portfolio can “accelerate the next generation of the internet.”

“As complexity to develop in Web3 continues to increase, the experienced team at thirdweb led by Furqan and Steven have built an elegant solution that allows developers to build fast while avoiding costly mistakes,” she said. “I’m pleased to see proven founders of this caliber dedicating their next chapter to crypto and look forward to supporting their efforts.”

Steven Bartlett, thirdweb’s founder is a university dropout who previously built Web2 company Social Chain, valued at $600 million. His latest project, thirdweb, provides tools for its users to launch and manage Web3 projects including NFT (non-fungible token) drops, digital marketplaces, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), games and many more. 

“Web3 is the most important technological shift I’ve witnessed in my lifetime,” Bartlett said in a statement. “I don’t think anybody quite realizes how much Web3 is going to change the world.”

Other worthy fundraise mentions this week:

• Credit risk assessment infrastructure Web3 startup Spectral secured $23 million from General Catalyst and Social Capital.
• Comm, a company that wants to be Web3’s Discord, raised a $5 million seed round.
• Solana mobile stack, a subsidiary of Solana Labs, secured $4.5 million in seed funding led by SBI Holdings.

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