Robot Ventures raises $75m for early-stage crypto fund

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As a seasoned crypto investor with over a decade of experience navigating the digital asset landscape, I find Robot Ventures’ latest $75 million fund raise intriguing. While it’s smaller than some recent raises by competitors, it’s still a significant step for this U.S.-based firm, particularly given their impressive portfolio that includes Lido Finance, Optimism, and LayerZero.

The venture capital firm, Robot Ventures, which specializes in backing projects within the cryptocurrency sector during their initial stages, has successfully secured $75 million for a freshly established crypto investment fund.

The fund is the U.S.-based crypto VC firm’s fourth fund, Bloomberg reported on Aug. 30.

Robot Ventures, with investments in firms like Lido Finance (LDO), Optimism (OP) and LayerZero (ZRO), has garnered attention from notable figures within the industry for its fund. This includes TrueBridge Capital Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, a renowned investor in many cryptocurrency-related projects.

Fund bigger than previous ones

The $75 million fund is nearly three times bigger compared to Robot Ventures’ previous funds. According to the VC platform’s general partner Tarun Chitra, the jump from $22 million to the latest raise comes amid growing interest in crypto from institutional investors.

Although significant, the fundraising of the company is less than the $150 million raised by Hack VC in February and the $850 million announced by Paradigm in June. On August 28th, crypto venture capital firm Lemniscap declared a $70 million fund for web3 startups.

The general trend indicates that the cryptocurrency venture capital (VC) field has experienced an uptick in attention following a significant downturn after the 2022 bear market. As crypto.news detailed, the sector closed a total of $2.7 billion worth of venture capital transactions during the second quarter of 2024.

What crypto sectors are seeing huge VC interest?

Some recent venture capital raises across the crypto market have suggested a fresh outlook.

Significant areas encompass practical asset ventures, confidentiality verification methods (zero-knowledge proofs), distributed network infrastructures for the physical world, and intelligent machines (artificial intelligence). Noteworthy sectors also include the decentralized financial marketplace, traditional capital markets, and the Bitcoin-related economic environment.

In one of its latest investments, Robot Ventures backed the $4 million round for zkMe, a project looking to build a zero-knowledge credential layer for web3. Multicoin Capital led the strategic funding round, with OKX Ventures also participating.

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2024-08-30 20:08