Top 10 Active Crypto VCs in APAC: Animoca Brands and Hashed Led Most Rounds.
The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most dynamic regions in the Web3 industry. This year, the governments of Hong Kong, Japan, and other counties and regions have launched active policies to support the development of local Web3 industries, making them competitive candidates for being the next Web3 center. The web3 market also sees prosperity in markets of China, South Korea, Vietnam, and other countries, where many great projects have emerged.
Nowadays, more and more Web3 projects are pivoting their business to the Asia Pacific region, attracting the attention of many venture capital organizations. Rootdata recently released the list of “Top 10 Emerging Crypto Venture Capital Firms”, half of which including No Limit Holdings, IOBC Capital, and Arcane Group are located in the Asia Pacific. Besides that, well-established companies such as HashKey Capital, IOSG Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, and Hashed remain active in this region.
In this article, RootsData uses its own investment and financing statistics to analyze venture capital institutions mainly located in the Asia-Pacific region based on investment frequency, number of lead investments, fund size, and other factors in the past year and concludes the ten most representative and active venture capital institutions.
Animoca Brands / Animoca Ventures
Animoca Brands is a Web3 gaming software company and venture capital firm founded by Yat Siu in 2014 and headquartered in Hong Kong. Animoca Brands has long been one of the most active investors in the crypto industry, with a cumulative portfolio of over 400 investments and subsidiaries such as The Sandbox and Quidd. Animoca Brands invests primarily in the gaming and NFT sectors.
In 2022, Animoca Brands established a separate venture capital arm called Animoca Ventures, with an initial fundraising target of $2 billion. However, as a result of the market downturn and a lack of investor confidence, this target was reduced to $1 billion and then to $800 million. Nevertheless, Animoca Ventures remains one of the most cash-rich funds on the market: the two investment entities made at least a total of 37 investments in the past year and led at least eight investments in projects including Mythical Games, OP3N, and Xterio.
Foresight Ventures
Foresight Ventures is a Singapore-based venture capital firm focusing on blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency industry, with over $400 million in assets under management. The Foresight Ventures team consists of veterans from Sequoia Capital, CICC, Google, Bitmain, and other top financial and technology companies.
Foresight Ventures is backed by the exchange Bitget and uses an ecosystem to build its brand. Its ecosystem mainly consists of exchange Bitget, wallet Bitkeep, Chinese crypto media Foresight News, and incubator Foresight X. The company is also a member of the Foresight Ventures Group.
On June 16, 2022, Foresight Ventures launched Foresight Secondary Fund I, a $200 million secondary fund focusing on investing in liquidity-seeking cryptocurrency assets (SAFTs) in the private markets. Crypto exchange Bitget is the largest single LP in the fund, according to official disclosures.
According to Rootdata, Foresight Ventures has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 56 investments. In the last year, it made 25 investments in well-known crypto projects such as Sei Network, Story Protocol, Ola, DappOS, and EthStorage.
HashKey Capital
The history of HashKey Capital can date back to 2015 when Dr. Xiao Feng from HashKey Group decided to bet on a then-unknown project Ether. Today, Ether has grown to become the most important platform-level infrastructure in this field.
Following the venture capital business, HashKey Group has established other businesses such as HashKey Capital, HashKey Custody and HashKey DID. Recently, HashKey Group has been approved by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to carry out over-the-counter (OTC) trading of virtual assets and is now one of the most influential crypto firms in the Asia-Pacific region.
HashKey Capital CEO Chao Deng said in an interview this year that the team, based in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the San Francisco Bay Area, has more than $1 billion in assets under management, and has invested in about 300 projects.
According to Rootdata, HashKey Capital has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 224 investments, and on January 17, 2023, HashKey Capital completed a $500 million fundraising round for its Phase III fund. In the past year, HashKey Capital made 55 investments, including such notable projects as Aethir, a decentralized real-time rendering network; dappOS, a Web3 operating protocol; and PolyHedra, an infrastructure for Web3 interoperability.
Hashed
Hashed is Korea’s most iconic venture capital fund, co-founded by Ryan Sungho Kim in 2016, with early investments in Terra, Klaytn, The Sandbox, and many other well-known projects in the Asia-Pacific region.
In December 2020, Hashed launched the first tranche of its $120 million venture capital fund, and in December 2021, Hashed launched the second tranche of its $200 million venture capital fund. With these two tranches, Hashed has become one of the most active venture capital funds in the crypto market, averaging up to nearly 10 investments per month through early 2021.
In an interview in the first half of 2022, its partner Baek Kim said without any LPs, Hashed had grown its AUM from $700,000 in its earliest days to $4 billion, with a team of 80 people. 65% of its invested project founders base in Asia.
However, due to over-betting on Terra and its eco-projects, Hashed was also clearly affected by the Terra crash in May 2022, and since then it has significantly slowed down its investment frequency, averaging only 2 to 3 deals per month, as its preferred DeFi and gaming sectors have performed poorly.
According to RootData, Hashed’s main fund has made a total of 16 outbound investments in the last year. Despite a less significant investment number, it has led seven investments in projects including Radius, Notifi, and Aura Network. In addition, Hashed Emergent, a fund dedicated to web3 investments in emerging markets such as India was launched in early 2022 and has four records of investments in the last year.
Infinity Ventures Crypto
Infinity Ventures Crypto, headquartered in Taipei, is a crypto fund with resources from Japan, Taiwan, and China. IVC’s mission is to support and invest in pioneering startups in fields such as GameFi, DeFi, and Web3. IVC inherited the 13-year tradition of startup investing from its sister fund, Headline Asia, which boasts established relations with companies globally in countries and regions such as Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States.
In February 2022, IVC announced the completion of a $70 million fundraising round with investment partners including giants such as Circle, Digital Currency Group, Animoca Brands, Bee Line Capital (Hive Ventures), and Cherubic Ventures.
Its founding partner Brian Lu says the fund is oversubscribed and he doesn’t want the fund size to grow continually, as Web3 companies are looking for smaller funding rounds. Their average investment size is likely to be around $250,000. 30% of the fund has been deployed and 80 deals have been closed. Of those, 55% are in Asia and 35% are in the Americas.
According to Rootdata, Infinity Ventures Crypto has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 119 investments. In the last year, Infinity Ventures Crypto made 21 investments in metaverse and NFT sectors, in such well-known crypto projects as Tribe3, Fungify, MetaZone, and Aspecta.
IOSG Ventures
IOSG Ventures, founded in 2017, is a research-driven, early-stage venture capital firm with bases in China, the US, and Singapore. It focuses on open finance in the decentralized economy, Web 3.0, and infrastructure.
IOSG Ventures invests based on four major theories: First, they believe in ambitious and resilient teams and founders; Second, they choose groundbreaking projects that add value to the entire Web 3.0 ecosystem; Third, they want superior operational and delivery capabilities; Forth, they focus on building strong communities with a large number of users; IOSG attaches importance to branding, and thus outputs in-depth research reports every week.
According to Rootdata, IOSG Ventures has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 141 investments. In the past year, IOSG Ventures made 21 investments in projects including EigenLayer, Scroll, Connext, and RISC Zero.
NGC Ventures
NGC Ventures is a Singapore-based venture capital firm, focusing on investing in blockchain and distributed ledger technology. It launched its first fund in 2017 and has invested in more than 50 projects to date, including Algorand, CoinFLEX, and DappReview. According to Jack Lu, managing director of NGC, the firm has earned about 5x returns from its first fund and now manages about $400 million in assets.
In January 2020, NGC Ventures raised approximately $20 million for its Fund II. The fund will deploy a wide range of investment strategies, from buying tokens and structured products to quantitative trading, pledging, and mining. NZC adopts an “all-weather investment strategy” based on different phases of the market cycle (accelerating growth, inflation, slowing growth, deflation, etc.), according to NGC’s founding partner, Tony Gu.
In May 2021, NGC Ventures announced the launch of a $20 million strategic investment fund to develop the Solana ecosystem. In addition to the investment, NGC Ventures plans to offer Solana ecosystem guidance on business development, recruitment, and financial management of the ecosystem. The eco-fund is one of five funds that will co-invest $100 million in the Solana ecosystem. Contributors include NGC Ventures, Huobi, Gate.io, HashKey, and MATH (a cross-chain wallet).
In May 2022, NGC Ventures launched the Web3 eco-fund Fund III, the company’s third blockchain fund, raising $100 million from investors including Babel Finance, Huobi Ventures, Nexo Ventures, Altonomy, and GBIC. NGC Ventures’ general partner, Roger Lim, said the fund will allocate capital to “highly potential projects” in the Web3 economy.
According to Rootdata, NGC Ventures has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 246 investments. In the last year, NGC Ventures has made 33 moves in projects including LayerZero, Connext, and Opside.
OKX Ventures
OKX Ventures is the investment arm of OKX, with an initial capital of $100 million, focusing on blockchain infrastructure, Layer2, DeFi, NFT, Metaverse, and other fields.
OKX Ventures claims it will provide extensive post-investment services for its investment projects, whether in China, Silicon Valley, Japan, Korea, or Southeast Asia. It has formed a network of resources with local media and KOLs that can help entrepreneurs from different perspectives. In addition, projects that OKX Ventures is deeply involved and has invested in will be recommended to OKX and have access to numerous OKX products, services, promotional resources, users, and brand endorsements.
According to Rootdata, OKX Ventures has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 130 investments. In the last year, OKX Ventures has made 19 moves in projects including LayerZero, Sei Network, Taiko, Berachain, Prisma Finance, and DappOS.
Spartan Group
Spartan Group is a leading blockchain investment and advisory firm based in Singapore and Hong Kong, focusing on long-term strategic and value investing. They are dedicated to finding blockchain projects with strong fundamentals, long-term growth potential, and innovation. The organization also focuses on global market trends and macroeconomic factors, as well as policies and regulations that impact the blockchain industry.
In June 2021, Spartan Group announced a $110 million DeFi fund. The fund focuses on the DeFi market, particularly on the application layer, and will support projects on Ether, Solana, and other networks. The fundraising reflects a growing interest in the DeFi market from professional investors, with a majority of LPs being high-net-worth investors and family offices that have recently entered the market. The fund has reportedly invested in projects such as dYdX and Arbitrum and plans to invest in around 50 projects over five years.
In March 2022, Spartan Group announced the creation of a $200 million metaverse fund focusing on building metaverse projects, particularly “digitally owned” virtual worlds. Spartan Group‘s new fund focuses on three different layers of the metaverse: the infrastructure layer, the experience layer, and the value add layer. The third layer includes game guilds and NFT trading platforms.
According to Rootdata, Spartan Group has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 177 investments. In the last year, Spartan Group has made 36 investments, favoring identity privacy and AI projects, such as Aspecta, Kaito, Anoma Network, zkMe, and other crypto projects.
SevenX Ventures
SevenX Ventures, founded in 2020, is a fast-growing emerging crypto investment fund in Asia, whose three founding partners (Jon, FC, Eraser) and the rest of the team are veterans with over five years of experience in the industry.
In terms of investment style, SevenX Ventures advocates “immersive investing”: besides providing financial support, it also empowers its invested projects in financing planning, product design, economic modeling, and marketing. This kind of investment style may be attributed to the fact that FC and Eraser once worked at Genesis Capital and deeply incubated several projects.
According to Rootdata, SevenX Ventures has a publicly disclosed portfolio of 115 investments. In the last year, SevenX Ventures has made 23 investments in well-known crypto projects such as Manta Network, EthStorage, Lifeform, and Caldera.
