Gumi Cryptos Capital Launches $110M Fund for Blockchain Startups

key takeaways

The venture capital firm is hoping to follow on the success of its gCC Fund I
Up to 50 firms will be targeted by the fund, which will invest in both equity and tokens

Venture capital firm gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) said Wednesday it has set up a $110 million fund focused on the industry’s early-stage blockchain startups.

The firm’s second fund, gCC Fund II, is attempting to follow the success of its initial $21 million fund (gCC Fund I) by investing in startups building infrastructure, dev tools, gaming, metaverses, DAOs, guilds and Web3 apps, the company said.

Up to 50 global blockchain startups will be targeted by the firm’s second fund, which is expected to invest between $500,000 and $5 million per startup through initial and follow-up investments. The fund will invest in both equity and tokens.

The firm said its gCC Fund I, which backs early-stage seeds, grew from $21 million to a whopping $516 million in asset value, producing a return on capital exceeding 24 times its initial investment, according to a statement.

Fund II will target “exceptional” developers and projects at all layers during the earliest stage of a company’s lifecycle and is “chain-agnostic,” gCC said. Blockchain agnostic refers to a project providing solutions to be built or operated from the different underlying blockchains in the industry.

Hironao Kunimitsu, Rui Zhang and Miko Matsumura, the three partners from gCC’s initial fund, will lead gumi’s second fund. All three have founded and exited companies via mergers and acquisitions or initial public offerings, the statement reads.

“The existing institutions and infrastructure including social infrastructure, governance, financial services and big tech are demonstrably failing us,” Miko Matsumura, gCC managing partner, said. “Because the way forward is unknown, there’s a strong appetite for experimentation.”

Matsumura added that tokens represent “monetary experimentation” while Web3, DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and guilds represent “governance experiments.”

The firm has invested in early-stage companies that saw explosive growth in recent years, including OpenSea, Yield Guild Gaming, Celsius Network and 1Inch Network.

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.