Crypto VC gCC Raises $110M Early-Stage Fund

Crypto venture capital firm gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) has set up a $110 million early-stage fund, gCC Fund II, that will invest in both equity and tokens, the company said on Wednesday.

The capital came from about 60 limited partners with about half of the money coming from Japan, largely from publicly-traded companies. The remainder of the funds came from the U.S. and Europe, including family offices and venture capital firms, gCC partner Rui Zhang told CoinDesk in an interview.

Last year, as digital asset prices rallied, crypto venture capital funds hit new highs with a $2.2 billion fund from Andreessen Horowitz in the summer and a $2.5 billion fund from Paradigm in November. The digital asset pullback at the beginning of the year hasn’t slowed VC firms with Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital each recently committing around $600 million toward crypto-specific investments.

gCC Fund II will invest between $500,000 to $5 million per project through both initial and follow-on investments. The firm is targeting 50 or so portfolio companies. Areas of interest include decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), guilds, Web 3 apps, games and protocols. gCC is willing to invest in the earliest stage companies and is blockchain-agnostic.

Four companies have already publicly announced their investments from gCC Fund II: Web 3 education platform ProofofLearn, NFT liquidity aggregator XY Finance, financial NFT platform Solv Finance and Web 3 accelerator and developer community AllianceDAO. Fund II has invested in five other companies that haven’t announced those investments yet.

The VC firm will offer operational support to portfolio leaders, which includes legal and financial advisors, token economy design and token liquidity and market making partners. It will also connect founders to its global investor network, built around its dual headquarters in San Francisco and Tokyo.

“We have unique access to both Silicon Valley startup culture and capital markets as well as access to the Japan market. Japan is also home to unique intellectual property assets especially in the fast-growing gaming sector. With our unique geographic advantage, we can help ambitious projects grow faster,” said Hironao Kunimitsu in the press release.

Kunimitsu, Zhang and Miko Matsumura, the three partners from gCC Fund I, will lead the new fund.

The new fund follows the successful gCC Fund I, whose asset value grew from $21 million to $516 million with around 36 portfolio companies. Seed investments from the fund included non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea and play-to-earn gaming guild Yield Guild Games.

The larger size of Fund II will allow the firm to be more aggressive in leading investment rounds and allows for follow-on investments, said Zhang.

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