Prominent venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, Galaxy Digital, and Accolade Partners are among the top contributors to crypto venture capital (VC) firm 1kx’s latest fund.
1kx raised $75 million, with Chris Dixon, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, as one of the limited partners, Lasse Clausen, the founding partner of 1kx, told Bloomberg on March 28.
Private equity firm Accolade is the anchor investor in the new fund, according to Clausen.
1kx’s new fund is targeting crypto-based consumer applications. The new fund has already made around five investments, said Clausen, without naming the companies. Clausen founded 1kx in 2018, along with Christopher Heymann.
The announcement of the new fund comes during a period of increasing institutional interest in crypto, bolstered by the approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the United States.
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Venture capital funding in crypto startups saw an uptick in Q4 2023 to $1.9 billion, which is 2.5% higher than the previous quarter, according to a report from PitchBook. This is the first time VC investments have risen since March 2022.
February’s VC investments also suggest renewed institutional confidence in the blockchain space, after a diverse group of crypto startups announced recent funding raises, including Lava Protocol, Analog, Helika, Truflation, and Omega, among others.
More notably, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced a $100-million funding round for EigenLayer, Ethereum’s largest restaking protocol by total value locked.
Avail closed a $27 million seed funding round, led by Founder Fund and Dragonfly, at the end of February. The Web3 data availability and consensus layer aims to use the funds to develop its products and accelerate Web3 unification.
In the wider crypto space, blockchain game publisher Immutable launched a $100 million fund to invest in blockchain games, in partnership with Venture capital firm King River Capital and Polygon Labs.
The new fund called “Inevitable Games Fund,” or IGF for short, raised $30 million during its first close.
The IGF kicked off with investments in seven blockchain game titles all native to ImmutableX or Polygon, including the Pokémon-reminiscent Pixelmon, fantasy role-player Guild of Guardians and shooter games Metalcore and My Pet Hooligan.
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