MetaWeb Ventures Raises $30M for Early Stage Crypto Startups

UTC by Darya Rudz · 3 min read
MetaWeb Ventures Raises $30M for Early Stage Crypto Startups
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Founded in 2021, MetaWeb Ventures has alredy invested in more than 30 startups, including Niche, Connect3, as well as BlockSec. But the main focus of MetaWeb Ventures is on NEAR Protocol. In 2023, MetaWeb Ventures will run a Second Fund, or “Fund II.”

Global crypto venture capital investment firm MetaWeb Ventures has announced the launch of its first fund. Called “Fund I” or “the Fund”, it received as much as $30 million in total capital commitments from such companies as Sequoia Capital, Dragonfly Capital, GSR Markets, Octopus Network, SevenX, Mentha Partners, and the NEAR Foundation. Besides, such entrepreneurs as Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Foundation co-founder), Bo Shao (co-founder of Matrix China), Shawn Shi (Alchemy Pay founder), and Mark Wang (founder of Dodo).

MetaWeb Ventures is planning to use the funds raised for investing in decentralized social media, decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Amos Zhang, Managing Partner at MetaWeb Ventures, commented:

“We founded MetaWeb to back the future Web3 leaders who will disrupt the world through blockchain. As former entrepreneurs, we will work side by side with the founders throughout their journey.”

Dani Osorio, Partner at MetaWeb Ventures, added:

“At the core, MetaWeb is unique in that we’re all builders who also invest– we have direct access to early projects as we can provide a very special kind of support to our founders.”

Founded in 2021, MetaWeb Ventures has already invested in more than 30 startups, including Niche, a Web3 social content app for the membership-based club, Connect3, a social engagement layer of Web3 and a next-gen decentralized social networking platform, as well as blockchain security service provider BlockSec. But the main focus of MetaWeb Ventures is on NEAR Protocol.

In 2023, MetaWeb Ventures will run a Second Fund, or “Fund II.”

About MetaWeb Ventures

MetaWeb Ventures was set up in 2021 as an ecosystem fund for NEAR Protocol. Its goal is to invest and incubate projects across DeFi, NFT, metaverse, gaming, social, middleware, and infrastructure in the blockchain. In January this year, MetaWeb Ventures invested as much as $150 million in NEAR Protocol within its Series B funding round.

Since its launch, MetaWeb Ventures expanded its reach beyond Near. It also invested in applications on such networks as Ethereum, Aurora, and Cosmos.

The team behind MetaWeb Ventures consists of crypto veterans who are pioneers of the industry, experienced engineers, serial entrepreneurs, and graduates from top research universities and institutions. Its founder, Amos Zhang, worked on public chains, enterprise blockchain, and SaaS products. He engaged with a dozen Fortune 500 companies, as well as some of the largest crypto projects in the world.

At present, MetaWeb Ventures’ team consists of 9 people based in New York, Denver, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, and Lisbon.

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