Venom Foundation And Iceberg Capital Launch $1B Web3 Venture Fund

The term “Web3” may not have the buzz it did this time last year, but that doesn’t mean all investors have forgotten about it.

Venom Foundation, a Layer-1 blockchain licensed and regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market, and Iceberg Capital have partnered to launch a $1 billion venture fund called Venom Ventures Fund.

The fund will invest in protocols and Web3 decentralized applications, concentrating on areas such as payments, asset management, DeFi, banking services and gaming.

The fund will be investing in projects and teams from pre-seed to Series A rounds.

Web3 funding slows

After a record year in 2021, when VC-backed startups in Web3 raised more than $30 billion, 2022 was a very different story.

Last year’s fourth quarter saw less than $2.4 billion roll into startups in the space, the lowest total since just about $1 billion went to startups in Q4 2020. The fourth quarter in 2021 saw a high of nearly $9.3 billion invested in the space.

That is not entirely surprising, as the venture market is in the midst of a significant pullback.  In 2022, venture funding globally hit $445 billion — a 35% decline year over year from the $681 billion invested in 2021 — according to Crunchbase data.

The decline likely affected Web3 startups more, as the technology is relatively new and many investors are not nearly as familiar with it as they are in other industries.

On top of that, the FTX debacle and crypto winter undoubtedly exacerbated the investment slowdown.

Despite the overall drop in venture, the new Venom fund is not the only large fund in the news recently. Earlier this week, it also was reported that Khosla Ventures has filed to raise $3 billion across three new funds.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman