Hack VC, a web3 venture capital firm based in New York, has successfully raised $150 million for investments in early-stage crypto and artificial intelligence (AI) startups. The company has identified decentralized finance (DeFi), real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and blockchain infrastructure solutions as the primary sectors for its crypto-focused investments.
Moving forward, Hack VC intends to invest in projects that enhance the user-friendliness and capital efficiency of cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the firm aims to support initiatives that mitigate smart contract and protocol hacks, which it compares to the viruses that plagued early internet users in the 1990s. Hack VC believes that the web3 space requires a significant shift in infrastructure across scalability, security, and usability before it can reach mainstream adoption.
Hack VC also plans to make substantial investments in the “Web3 x AI” space. This includes funding projects similar to its existing investments in companies like Jasper AI, an enterprise generative AI copilot, and Ritual, an AI coprocessor for blockchains.
Despite the prolonged bear market that caused the total crypto market to shrink from $3 trillion to $828 billion between 2021 and 2023, Hack VC maintains a strong belief in the potential of cryptocurrencies. The firm previously raised a $200 million seed fund in February 2022 to support early-stage crypto startups.
Hack VC’s upcoming investments will range from hundreds of thousands of dollars for smaller projects with solo founders to several million dollars for larger projects that the firm strongly believes in. Since entering the web3 space in 2014, the VC firm has made over 100 investments and seeded numerous unicorns, including Consensys, a leading Ethereum infrastructure firm, Mysten Labs (the team behind layer one blockchain Sui), and decentralized wireless network Helium. Currently, Hack VC manages around $425 million in assets.
Recent data reveals that venture funding for web3-related companies reached $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, marking a 2.5% increase from the previous quarter. Notably, Lightspeed Faction launched a $285 million fund for web3 startups in November 2023, making it one of the largest investments in the fourth quarter. Additionally, China’s state-owned National Engineering Laboratory announced a $10 billion web3 fund focused on virtual reality, the metaverse, and nonfungible tokens in December 2023.
OKX token’s $6.5 billion flash crash and the story of crypto executive “Mr. Bang” on the run are also covered in the related article from Asia Express Magazine.