VCs Remain Focused on Infrastructure
Funding pulled back this week, declining from $659M to $191M, with the number of deals declining from 24 to 18. Once again, infrastructure was the most heavily funded segment of the week – receiving nearly 75% of all funding at $142M. One of the most notable trends this year has been how, although crypto prices have declined, VCs are not slowing down on their crypto infrastructure investments. The segment typically receives $100M+ in funding each week. There were eight total infrastructure deals this week, the largest of which was Celestia Labs which raised $55M, putting it at a $1B valuation. We discuss Celestia more later in this report. Despite DeFi’s standout week last week, funding dropped to just $10M this week. Metaverse/Gaming was flat at $10M, and Web3 saw a slight increase from last week with $29M of funding. NFTs and CeFi have been particularly low-funded this month and received zero funding this week.
There was one crypto hedge fund raised this week – Edge Capital Management. The Florida-based fund raised $66.8M from investors to invest in early-stage DeFi projects with high growth potential.
Pre-Seed and Seed deals accounted for nearly all deals this week, at 11.1% and 66.7%, respectively.