American investment firm Variant announced Thursday the launch of a $450 million investment fund to empower decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and web3 startups. To accelerate the plan, the company said it had increased its workforce by 15 professionals specializing in DeFi, consumer interests, and infrastructure to offer support on token designs and other market utilities.
Variant Raises $450 Million
As per the official announcement, the latest funding dubbed “Variant Fund Three” includes a $150 million seed fund for leading founders in the web3 ecosystem and a $300 million opportunity fund to support promising projects on their portfolio and beyond.
The New York-based early-stage investment firm raised its first fund in 2020. In 2021, the company conducted another seed round, raising around $110 million to support the ownership economy, referring to companies that enable users to share in the ownership of goods and services.
Since its inception in 2020, the firm has supported a broad range of crypto companies, including non-fungible token (NFT) platform Magic Eden, Goldfinch, popular decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, and the Ethereum scaling solution Polygon.
Variant Investment Plans
Variant said the latest fund would be dedicated to financial empowerment through DeFi, the expansion of layer cake in blockchain computing, the new frontier of web3 consumer, and user experience defined by new forms of ownership.
“Blockchain development isn’t sequential and cannibalistic. It is composable, consisting of an ever-expanding stack that opens a new adjacent possibility for developers to build applications. From low-level computing primitives to developer tools, web3 infrastructure is maturing and on the verge of supporting the new product experiences demanded by mainstream consumers,” the company said.
Software developers focused on building cross-chain interoperable applications, protocols, and services that promote private key management and custody and improved security tooling that makes web3 safer for building apps will benefit from the new fund.
The report further explained that applications and infrastructure seeking to unlock web3 on mobile and projects addressing capital formation for different missions would receive support from the firm. Tokens and NFT builders will also not be left out of the plan.
Meanwhile, Variant is not the only crypto-focused investment firm that has raised funds to support the ecosystem. In March, Coinfomania reported that Bain Capital, U.S.-based venture capital raised a $560 million fund to support crypto-related startups.
