Sequoia Capital Is Raising up to $600M in New Sub-fund To Focus on Tokens

Founders have asked the firm to take a more active role in managing its tokens — this fund will give it that ability to engage further, it said

article-image

Blockworks exclusive art by Axel Rangel

share

key takeaways

  • The fifty-year-old company has $80 billion in assets under management
  • The firm’s involvement in crypto started back in 2015 when it began investing in the space through both equity and tokens

Sequoia Capital is launching a new $500 million to $600 million sub-fund focused primarily on liquid tokens and digital assets, a spokesperson confirmed with Blockworks on Thursday.

The capital plans to complement its other crypto investments in seed, venture, growth and expansion funds. It is also one of the first sub-funds to be launched as part of its new Sequoia Capital Fund, an open-ended liquid portfolio, the company said.

The founders have asked the firm to take a more active role in managing its tokens through staking, providing liquidity, participating in governance and trading through portfolio companies’ platforms. This fund will give it the ability to engage further, the company shared.

“Our goal with this fund is to participate more actively in protocols, better support token-only projects, and learn by doing ourselves,” Sequoia Capital’s Michelle Bailhe, Shaun Maguire and Alfred Lin wrote on the Sequoia blog.

The firm’s involvement in crypto started back in 2015 when it began investing in the space through both equity and tokens. In 2017, Sequoia invested through its main funds, while in 2021, 20% of its new investments throughout the US and Europe were in crypto.

“We believe that crypto is more than a sector; it’s a fundamental shift that will impact all sectors,” Sequoia noted. 

In general, Sequoia Capital invests in a number of sectors aside from crypto, such as technology, financial services, energy and healthcare. The fifty-year-old company has $80 billion in assets under management, according to PitchBook data.

This scale of investment is not uncommon for the firm. Sequoia Capital’s India branch led a $450 million private token sale in Polygon — a decentralized Ethereum scaling platform — earlier this month. Separately, in January, Sequoia and Paradigm invested $1.15 billion in Citadel Securities.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Salt Lake City, UT

MON - TUES, OCT. 7 - 8, 2024

Blockworks and Bankless in collaboration with buidlbox are excited to announce the second installment of the Permissionless Hackathon – taking place October 7-8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve partnered with buidlbox to bring together the brightest minds in crypto for […]

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Permissionless is a conference for founders, application developers, and users. Come meet the next generation of people building and using crypto.

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Monad Report Graphic.png

Research

Monad represents an ambitious attempt to address the scalability challenges faced by existing EVM chains. By leveraging innovative consensus and execution mechanisms, including pipelined consensus-execution and optimistic parallel execution, Monad aims to achieve performance metrics of 10,000 TPS and 1-second finality while maintaining full EVM compatibility. This approach positions Monad as a potential evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem, offering enhanced scalability without sacrificing the familiar developer or user experience.

article-image

Bitwise took the initial steps for an XRP ETF Wednesday

article-image

Plus, enrollment for the Donald Trump-backed crypto project is underway

article-image

On Solana so far, there are two main competitors: Jito and Solayer

article-image

Plus, Sui-eet liquidity surge and USDC’s new home on Base

article-image

The Web3 community is stacking bricks when it should be building bridges