This Month’s Crypto Fundraise Highlights So Far

The first half of October has seen numerous crypto-related companies securing multi-million fundraisers. Some examples include Horizon Blockchain Games, Step, Uniswap Labs, Copper Technologies, and the investment start-up Pillow.

Since the beginning of the year, digital asset firms have raised over $30 billion. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital played a key role, both completing $9 billion fundraisers.

The Beginning of October

At the start of the month, the blockchain start-up Juno raised $18 million to provide additional cryptocurrency services to users and establish its first tokenized loyalty program.

A few days later, the video game studio and blockchain infrastructure company – Horizon Blockchain Games – disclosed a $40 million Series A funding round. The initiative was led by many giants in the fintech sector, such as Brevan Howard Digital, Morgan Creek Digital, Polygon, Xchange, Translink, and more.

Horizon Blockchain Games raised hopes that the fresh capital will aid its efforts in the Web3 sector by providing various products and applications to customers.

Next on the list is Scale3 Labs – a start-up that supports blockchain node operators. The entity, spearheaded by the former Coinbase employees – Ola Muse and Karthik Kalyanaraman – raised $5.3 million to build developer tools for the Web3 universe.

The NASDAQ-listed crypto miner – TeraWulf – also hopped on the bandwagon by announcing a $17 million fundraiser to increase its operating capacity above 1.6 EH/s. 

The banking platform Step secured a considerable $300 million in debt funding. The funds will aid the company’s goal to launch a cryptocurrency platform.

The Last Few Days

On October 12, the web3 platform – Nxyz – completed a $40 million financing led by Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and other prominent players. It vowed to use the funds to hire more professionals for its divisions. 

On the same day, Twitch’s Co-Founder – Justin Kan – raised $14 million. The investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and its goal is to transform Kan’s platform Rye into the “Shopify of Web3.” 

The UK-based crypto custodian – Copper Technologies – also joined the club by announcing a $196 million Series C financing round. New and existing shareholders accounted for $181 million of the total capital, while $15 million came as a convertible loan note. 

On October 13, Uniswap Labs – the team behind the popular decentralized exchange – introduced a $165 million fundraiser to guide its NFT efforts. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), SV Angel, Paradigm, and Variant were some of the firms to lead the investment.

A Day later, the Singapore-based cryptocurrency investment start-up – Pillow – secured $18.1 million in a Series A funding round. Its Co-Founder Arindam Roy outlined that the entity has already spread its presence among 60 nations, while the multi-million capital could allow it to target more countries.

Some of the Biggest Fundraisers in 2022

The American venture capital firms – Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Sequoia Capital – are the two organizations that have announced the largest funding rounds so far this year.

In January, the former raised a whopping $9 billion to double down on its involvement in the cryptocurrency sector, while in May, it secured an additional $4.5 billion fundraiser. Arianna Simpson – a General Partner at a16z – said the bear market is the perfect period for such massive investments.

This summer, the Chinese subsidiary of Sequoia Capital matched Andreessen Horowitz’s efforts raising $9 billion for four new funds. The capital should support fintech and cryptocurrency start-ups in the world’s most populous country.