Infrastructure Continues to Lead, and Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Raises $115M
Funding declined from $238M last week to $164M this week. Most deals (75%) were in the infrastructure vertical, which increased from $104M to $124M this week, with six total deals. The second most funded sector was Metaverse & Gaming, which rose to $23M in funding this week from no funding last week. Every other sector lagged—Web3 & NFTs had $15M in funding, DeFi had $2M, and CeFi and Mining had no deals. The largest deal this week was for Worldcoin. Worldcoin is an infrastructure-based firm aiming to provide its users with an accessible global currency, identification, and payment platform. The company secured $115M in funding through its series C round led by Blockchain Capital. Worldcoin was founded by Sam Altman, who also founded OpenAI, and the project caught lots of attention when it was founded due to its controversial eyeball scanning technology.
There was one crypto fund raised this week – Dispersion Capital raised $40M to invest in Web3 infrastructure. LPs of the firm include the venture capital arm of USDC issuer Circle, Ripple, and Alchemy’s investment arm.
Most of the 18 deals this week were early-stage – five were Seed Round and two were Pre Seed.
Deal of the Week
Sort, a Web3 app development platform, raised $3.5 million in a seed round co-led by Lemniscap and the General Partnership. Investor participation also included Alliance DAO, Blizzard Fund, Red Rooster Ventures, and angels from Coinbase and Gemini. The funding is earmarked for expanding the Sort team and its product suite and expediting the launch of “Sort applications”, its full-stack tool for programming blockchain UIs.
Why Is This the Deal of the Week?
A pain point across the crypto industry is the high barriers of entry for developers. Most blockchain contracts use less common programming languages such as Solidity and discourage participation from more traditional programmers. Sort is hoping to alleviate this issue by offering customers “power tools for UI development” and bringing the next million developers to Web3. Developers only need a smart contract address to get started on Sort. Sort will act as the back end, managing servers and infrastructure while automatically creating a UI for the smart contract. Sort’s complete developer toolkit allows Web3 projects to focus more on their core product and deploy their applications quicker and more efficiently. Sort currently has 150 free customers and a few paying ones ahead of their official launch. Sort’s product suite should encourage hesitant developers to jump into Web3 and make it easy enough for all skill levels to start creating blockchain applications.
Selected Deals
OrionX is a CeFi-based platform headquartered in Chile, aiming to accelerate crypto adoption in Latin America. The platform plans to accomplish this by allowing new and advanced users to trade digital assets. The platform also offers access to a crypto wallet. The company has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Bitfinex. OrionX intends to expand its user base to Columbia, Mexico, and Peru by Q4 2024.
Openfort is an infrastructure-based platform aiming to provide gaming studios with a simplified way of integrating blockchain-related accounts for their users. The platform plans to accomplish this while still allowing developers to maintain control over their contracts and code. The company has secured $3M in funding through its Seed round, co-led by Maven 11 and Gumi Cryptos Capital. The funding round included investor participation from Newman Capital, Game7, and NGC Ventures.
Pomerium is a Web3 gaming studio aiming to develop play-to-earn (P2E) based games that provide users with immersive and engaging experiences. The studio also places a strong emphasis on the transparency and safety of blockchain-related technology within its games. The company has secured $20M in funding through an undisclosed round. Pomerium intends to use the capital raised to expand its portfolio of gaming titles.
Num Finance is a DeFi-based platform that offers collateralized loans in the form of local currency stablecoins to businesses located in emerging markets. The company has secured $1.5M in funding through its Pre-Seed round led by Reserve. The funding round included investor participation from Ripio Ventures, H20 Scouter Fund, and Matias Woloski. Num Finance intends to use the capital raised to expand the platform’s current product offerings geographically.
