New fund targets projects at the bleeding-edge of innovation, in both crypto and emerging tech
Kraken Ventures, an independent investment fund led by Kraken alumni targeting early stage companies and protocols across the crypto and fintech ecosystem, has announced the successful closing of its first fund, Kraken Ventures Fund I LP. In addition to Kraken as the anchor LP, the fund raised capital from a broad group of global institutional investors.
“We’re extremely pleased to have successfully closed our first fund”
Kraken Ventures invests in the underlying technologies powering the next wave of crypto and fintech innovation and focuses on areas including financial infrastructure, Web3, decentralized finance (DeFi), consumer crypto protocols as well as enabling technologies, such as AI and Machine Learning. It has already made a number of investments including positions in Blockdaemon, Anchorage, Messari, Hashflow, Acala, and pStake.
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“We’re extremely pleased to have successfully closed our first fund,” said Brandon Gath, Managing Partner of Kraken Ventures. “Our long-term view on investing, and the possibility to leverage Kraken’s experience in building a truly global, scalable platform, definitely contributed to the overwhelming interest we received from investors. Our focus now is to put that money to work and help some of the most innovative projects and their exceptionally talented founders accelerate the development of their companies and protocols.”
Kraken Ventures is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with a distributed team in New York and London. The fund targets initial investments in the $500K to $2M range. Its investment strategy is based on a long-term investment horizon and hands-on approach. The team works side-by-side with its portfolio companies to build and scale their businesses by offering strategic guidance, sourcing new commercial opportunities and providing capital support.
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European Expansion
As part of Kraken Ventures’ global expansion, Kraken Ventures is pleased to announce the recent appointment of Laurens De Poorter as Head of Europe. Before joining Kraken Ventures, Laurens was Vice President at Dawn Capital in London where he focused on early-stage investments in enterprise software and fintech companies. He holds an MBA from Harvard and an Engineering degree from KU Leuven. Based in London, Laurens will focus on identifying and executing investments and working with portfolio companies across the European continent and beyond.
“The European crypto scene is booming. Deal count doubled in the last two years and continues to accelerate,” said Laurens De Poorter. “With the influx of institutional money and impending regulation wave, one of the most promising areas will be the intersection of crypto and fintech. I couldn’t be more excited to join Kraken Ventures and look forward to working with the broader team to identify the most promising opportunities out there.”
De Poorter added: “In this competitive industry, what makes Kraken Ventures really stand out is the amount of time and resources it can allocate to each of its portfolio companies, allowing it to add real value to the businesses it invests in.”
Kraken Ventures also recently appointed Mavis Xu as a Senior Associate based in New York, where she will be responsible for sourcing new investment opportunities, conducting due diligence and closing investments. After finishing graduate school at NYU for Public Policy and Social Impact Investing, Mavis joined Liberty City Ventures to invest in early-stage companies building blockchain infrastructure.
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