Variant

Venture firm Variant secures $450M to invest in early-stage Web3 projects

  • Early-stage venture firm Variant has confirmed raising $450 million via an investment round despite a bearish market prevailing currently.
  • Furthermore, the fund will be divided into two: a $150 million seed fund for novel projects followed by $300 million to support growing projects

Variant, an early-stage venture firm investing in Web3, has recently raised a $450 million umbrella fund. The fund is divided into two funds: a $150 million seed fund to invest in early-stage projects and a $300 million fund to support projects “with demonstrated traction from [its] portfolio and beyond.”

According to the official announcement, the fundraising round was led by a16z veterans Li Jin, Jesse Walden, and Spencer Noon.

Variant, whose diverse portfolio includes big Web3 projects, including Uniswap, Foundation, Polygon, Magic Eden, and Mirror, is emphasizing investments in user-owned networks that aim to develop favorable economic terms. 

The company outlined some of the areas it is interested in investing in:

  • Projects addressing the NFTs’ financialization and productivity
  • Stablecoin projects that prioritize risk management and mainstream user adoption
  • MEV derivatives and net-new blockspace-related markets
  • Financial primitives that leverage composability to create net-new functionality
  • Projects that bridge the traditional financial system with DeFi
  • Financial primitives that leverage user ownership to unlock sustainable liquidity network effects

Variant reveals its massive plans

Variant is targeting areas including DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, consumer applications, stablecoins, and businesses that experiment with a new form of capital ownership with its latest fund, which is the company’s third overall.

Since he thought this technique served as the foundation for determining the fund size, general partner Jesse Walden characterized the fund’s investment thesis as “being the marquee seed fund in Web3.” It explains why the first two fundings only raised $110M and $22.5M, respectively, which is a small sum in comparison to VC behemoths like a16z.

The establishment of the fund coincides with a delay in capital inflow for relevant investments due to the ongoing crypto bear market. Crunchbase data shows that cryptocurrency venture capital investments totaled $9.3 billion in the first half of this year, a decrease of 26% from the previous year.

The creators of Variant think that by being small, they can help entrepreneurs overcome the challenging times “they face early in their journey.”

The announcement also stated that Variant has doubled the number of employees at the company to 15, all of whom have extensive knowledge of infrastructure, consumer products, and DeFi.

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Parth Dubey Verified

A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.

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