Quick take:
- Polychain has raised $200 million for its fourth fund.
- The crypto-focused investment company is targeting $400 million for the new fund.
- Polychain also let go of three members of its research team amid a change in investment strategy.
Polychain Capital has announced a $200 million funding round for its fourth fund. The fundraising is the first close of a targeted $400 million.
The company has been one of the most active venture capital firms in the web3 space during the crypto winter. Web3 funding has consistently declined over the last five quarters according to CrunchBase data.
However, Polychain’s huge fundraising shows the resilience of some of the industry’s staunch supporters, with the company looking to capitalise on the benefits of raising funds in a bear market. According to Pitchbook, crypto VCs are finding it relatively tougher to raise funds, with just $1.7 billion raised in the first half of 2023 across 12 funds.
Before the latest fundraising, Polychain raised three funds totalling $2.6 billion, which contributed to the digital assets VC making the list of inaugural Fortune Crypto 40 in 2023, Fortune reported.
Polychain’s announcement also coincided with another web3 venture firm CoinFund’s $158 million round for its fourth fund, while metaverse gaming tech provider Futureverse secured $54 million from 10T Holdings and Ripple Labs.
Polychain’s new fund takes a different focus amid the bear market, with the company now targeting Ethereum-based projects similar to its investments in layer-2 Ethereum-based networks, Arbitrum and Scroll, as well as, EigenLayer, a staking protocol based on the Ethereum network.
The new focus contributed to the laying off of three members from Polychain’s research team, Fortune reported.
In March 2022, Polychain led NFT appraisal platform Upshot’s $22 million funding round, before leading decentralised exchange platform Uniswap’s $165 million Series B round in October.
In December Polychain also led web3 startup Fleek’s $25 million Series A round for the development of a protocol layer, while last month, the company participated in Connext Labs’ $7.5 million funding round that also attracted the likes of NGC Ventures, Polygon Ventures, and Fenbushi Capital, among others.
****
Stay up to date:
Subscribe to our newsletter using this link – we won’t spam!
