FTX Trading, a Bahamas-registered cryptocurrency marketplace operator, has set up a $2bn corporate venture capital fund and hired Amy Wu from venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners to head the vehicle.
FTX Ventures includes the $100m gaming fund launched with blockchain technology provider Solana in November 2021. Wu said: “We will be folding the Solana gaming funding into FTX Ventures as well. Solana is a close ecosystem partner well beyond the gaming vertical. FTX Ventures will invest across blockchain ecosystems beyond Solana as well.”
The $2bn represents the amount of new capital ready to be deployed to builders of the future of Web3, the term used for the blockchain-supported web, across social, gaming, fintech, software and healthcare, not the value of the existing portfolio, Wu added.
Wu said: “With FTX Ventures, we are looking to support entrepreneurs building generational businesses. We are particularly excited about Web3 gaming and its ability to bring mainstream audiences into the ecosystem.”
There are no external limited partners as the fund is backed by FTX’s CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, and FTX, the firm said by email. The fund will invest in multi-stage companies and projects, providing flexible funding and strategic support from FTX and its network of global partners.
“Our investors at FTX have made a deep impact in supporting our growth and development,” Bankman-Fried said. “We strive to do the same at FTX Ventures.”
Founded in 2019 and incubated by quantitative trading firm Alameda Research, FTX had 69 investors in its last round, when it raised $421m in October 2021.
The October investors include telecommunications and internet group SoftBank, payment technology provider Circle and crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance as well as a who’s who of financial investors such as Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s Teachers’ Innovation Platform, BlackRock, Temasek, Sequoia Capital, IVP, Iconiq Growth, Tiger Global Management, Sea Capital, Ribbit Capital and Lightspeed.
Wu joined FTX from Lightspeed where she had been a partner on its $10bn-plus multi-stage venture fund, leading crypto and gaming deals including its investment in FTX. She was previously an executive at media group Discovery where she led operations and finance across Asian markets, digital businesses and sports.
FTX Ventures will launch with a team of eight, including general partner Ramnik Arora and investors Adam Jin and Brian Lee along with Armani Ferrante as an adviser.
VCs invested $30bn in crypto projects last year according to Bloomberg, and are rapidly scaling up the industry and linking it with the main trading exchanges in traditional financial services. Paradigm, a four-year-old crypto investor, joined venture capital firm Sequoia Capital last week to buy a $1.2bn stake in market maker Citadel Securities.
The FTX fund comes as Katie Haun, formerly a partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, is trying to raise at least $900m for crypto funds.
Gaming platform developer Gala Games and early-stage investment platform C² Ventures have launched a $100m fund for blockchain gaming, and some of the largest Asian VC firms and crypto hedge funds will invest $100m to further develop decentralised finance, non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrency game apps on a new blockchain called Assembly, under the Iota distributed ledger network.
Investment firms led by LD Capital, Signum Capital, Huobi Ventures, UOB Venture Management, HyperChain Capital and Du Capital along with crypto market-maker GSR have committed $100m to funding developments in the Assembly network, they confirmed to Reuters.
