Lightspeed Faction raises $285M crypto fund despite broader VC decline
80% of the capital remains uncommitted as the firm looks primarily to invest in infrastructure and protocol-level projects, the fund’s co-founders said
Relight Motion / Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks
Lightspeed Faction has raised $285 million in capital for investment in early-stage crypto projects, the Menlo Park-based fund announced Thursday.
Faction has already inked twenty deals, most of which are yet to be made public, but around 80% of the $285 million remains uncommitted, the fund’s co-founder told Blockworks.
Lightspeed Faction is a blockchain-focused joint venture with Lightspeed Venture Partners that first came to light in mid-2022. This is the firm’s first venture fund.
Faction co-founder Samuel Harrison said the fund is interested in projects at the infrastructure and protocol level, mentioning wallets and brokerages, developer tooling platforms, and remittance services as a few examples.
“The TL;DR is we’ve been really focused on the plumbing,” Banafsheh Fathieh, Faction’s other co-founder, said.
The fund closed in July 2023, Fathieh said.
Faction’s announcement comes as VC sentiment towards crypto seems dour — the sum of crypto venture capital has declined in five of the six quarters since the first of 2022.
“There’s a lot of narrative around capital having dried up…we remain very firmly committed to crypto. We’re not a fund that’s investing in frontier tech or something. We are investing specifically [in] all things blockchain related, and we’re not going to deviate from that,” Fathieh said.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- Blockworks Daily: Unpacking crypto and the markets.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
