Hack VC, a Web3 venture capital firm based in New York, has successfully raised $150 million to invest in early-stage crypto and artificial intelligence (AI) startups. The firm has identified decentralized finance (DeFi), real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, and blockchain infrastructure solutions as the key sectors for its crypto-focused investments. Additionally, Hack VC plans to focus on projects that enhance the user-friendliness and capital efficiency of crypto, while also addressing the issue of smart contract and protocol hacks that resemble the viruses of the early internet era.
According to Hack VC, a fundamental shift in infrastructure is necessary across scalability, security, and usability before Web3 can truly reach its full potential. The firm also intends to heavily invest in the intersection of Web3 and AI, similar to its previous investments in projects like Jasper AI, an AI copilot for enterprises, and Ritual, an AI coprocessor for blockchains.
Despite the bear market in crypto, which resulted in the total market shrinking from $3 trillion to $828 billion between 2021 and 2023, Hack VC remains committed to the industry. The firm previously raised a $200 million seed fund in February 2022 to support early-stage crypto startups. In terms of future investments, Hack VC will range from smaller projects with solo founders, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars, to larger projects in which the firm has strong conviction, receiving several million dollars.
Since entering the Web3 space in 2014, Hack VC 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 Helium, a decentralized wireless network. The firm’s assets under management currently stand at approximately $425 million.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, venture funding for Web3-related companies reached $1.9 billion, marking a 2.5% increase from the previous quarter and the first increase since the first quarter of 2022. Notably, Lightspeed Faction launched a $285 million fund for Web3 startups in November 2023, contributing to the significant investment activity. Moreover, 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.
In other news, the OKX token experienced a flash crash worth $6.5 billion, and a crypto executive known as “Mr. Bang” is currently on the run, as reported by Asia Express magazine.