Author: Zen, PANews

Recently, RW3 Ventures, a early-stage venture capital firm focusing on the blockchain industry, announced that it has raised $60 million for its Fund I LP and stated that it will invest in teams seeking to use blockchain technology to disrupt real-world industries and business models. The fund has received support from multiple institutions, including The Raptor Group and Mubadala Capital, a fully owned asset management subsidiary of the global sovereign investor Mubadala Investment Company based in Abu Dhabi.

RW3 Ventures, established in 2021 in collaboration with Jim Pallotta's family office, The Raptor Group, is a family office and venture capital firm founded in 2009, primarily investing in the technology, consumer, financial services, healthcare, sports, and media verticals. Benefiting from Raptor's successful early investment background, RW3 Ventures can leverage its experienced internal operations, legal, accounting, finance, and compliance teams.

RW3 Ventures Team Overview

The RW3 team has extensive operational and investment experience in some well-known digital asset companies and financial institutions, and has established a wide network of relationships throughout the entire blockchain ecosystem. Its founder and managing partner, Pete Najarian, has rich experience in both traditional and crypto markets. He began his career at Merrill Lynch in 1993, engaging in fixed income sales and trading. He also played a leadership role in global emerging markets business at UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and it was his passion for emerging markets that led him to Bitcoin. After gaining a deeper understanding of the blockchain field, Pete joined the crypto custody service provider Xapo as Senior Vice President, whose business was sold to Coinbase in 2019. Subsequently, Pete chose to join the crypto custody company BitGo as Chief Risk Officer.

Jim Pallotta, founder of The Raptor Group, serves as a member of RW3's investment committee. Prior to founding Raptor, as Vice Chairman of Tudor Investments Corporation, Jim managed a $10 billion equity investment portfolio. He served as president and chairman of the Italian football club AS Roma and was also a co-owner and board member of the Boston Celtics. Throughout his career, Jim has actively invested in seed/early, growth, and late-stage companies in the technology, consumer, financial services, healthcare, sports, and media verticals.

Joe Bruzzesi is also a general partner at RW3, with over 10 years of experience in building, consulting, and investing in early-stage fintech companies. Before joining RW3, Joe was responsible for the Americas business at BitGo, leading over $10 billion in digital asset transactions with top blockchain protocols, crypto investment funds and companies, and institutional investors. In addition to BitGo, Joe's investment and consulting experience also includes being one of the first advisors to Ava Labs, the developer of the public chain Avalanche, and an early investor in companies such as Gryphon Mining, Codex Energy, Arcade.XYZ, and Casper Labs.

Focus on investing in infrastructure and Web3 consumer sectors

RW3 takes a collaborative, hands-on approach to help Web3 founders develop and expand their platforms. In addition to deploying capital, RW3 Ventures can assist startups in hiring talent, building communities, and enhancing their technical R&D capabilities. Fund I will seek opportunities from seed stage to Series A financing, focusing on teams seeking to use blockchain technology to disrupt real-world industries and business models with significant market potential. Joe Bruzzesi revealed to Fortune magazine that their key investment areas are real-world use cases for blockchain.

To date, the fund has made at least 25 investments in blockchain protocols, decentralized infrastructure, fully homomorphic encryption, and gaming sectors. The projects in which it has invested and their respective rounds of funding are as follows:

• Titan Content: An entertainment company aiming to combine traditional Korean business models and content with Web3, metaverse, and artificial intelligence innovation. Completed seed round financing in November 2023, with RW3 and Raptor as lead investors, Dreamus Company as a co-lead investor, and participation from Animoca Ventures, Sfermion, Avalanche, and others.
• Artifact Lab: A platform for in-game user profiles and monetization. Completed a $2 million pre-seed round of financing in November 2023, with lead investments from RW3 Ventures and IOSG Ventures.
• Bazooka Tango: Developer of the Web3 tactical collectible card game Shardbound. Completed a $5 million financing round in November 2023, with Bitkraft Ventures as the lead investor, and participation from RW3 Ventures, Sfermion, Foresight Ventures, and Builder Capital, among others.
• Rymedi: A blockchain-based Web3 medical data platform. Completed a $9 million Series A financing in October 2023, with RW3 Ventures and White Star Capital as co-lead investors, and participation from Blockchange Ventures, Avalanche Blizzard Fund, and others.
• CAT Labs: A company specializing in cryptocurrency forensics and network security. Completed a $4.3 million financing round in April 2023, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, CMT Digital, and others.
• Figment: A staking service provider. Completed a $110 million Series C financing in December 2021, with Thoma Bravo as the lead investor, and participation from Counterpoint Global, Binance, ParaFi Capital, and others.
• Ledn: A cryptocurrency lending platform. Completed a $70 million Series B financing in December 2021, with a post-money valuation of $540 million. The round was led by 10T Holdings.
• Mysten Labs: The developer of the public chain Sui. Completed a $300 million Series B financing in September 2022, with a valuation exceeding $20 billion. FTX Ventures led the round, with participation from a16z Crypto, Jump Crypto, and others.
• Helium (Nova Labs): A decentralized wireless network. Completed a $200 million Series D financing in March 2022, with a pre-money valuation of $1 billion. Tiger Global and a16z Crypto co-led the round.
• Breach: A cryptocurrency insurance company. Completed a financing round in June 2023, with RW3 and LightShed Ventures as lead investors, and participation from Foundation Capital, Road Capital, Republic Capital, and others.
• Thetanuts Finance: A platform for crypto derivatives. Completed an $18 million seed round of financing in March 2022, with lead investments from Three Arrows Capital, Deribit, QCP Capital, and Jump Crypto.
• Gunzilla Games: A AAA game studio built on the Avalanche subnetwork, and the developer of the cyberpunk battle royale game Off The Grid. Completed a $46 million financing round in August 2022, with Republic Capital as the lead investor, and participation from Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, and others.

In addition, RW3 has also invested in the public chain NEAR, the Avalanche ecosystem shooting game Shrapnel, the NFT game MojoMelee, the decentralized broadcast delivery network Blockcast, the Avalanche ecosystem AMM protocol Multiswap, the blockchain mobile operator Bloxtel, the real-time computing service provider for encrypted data sets Cornami, the decentralized tools and infrastructure focused on data interoperability and privacy protection Source Network, the decentralized meta-protocol tracker based on the Bitcoin native chain Trac, the Bitcoin mining company Satoshi Mining, and the payment app Sats App.

Regarding investment methods, Pete Najarian stated that RW3 prefers to invest through a combination of traditional equity and token warrants, which is a common strategy for cryptocurrency venture funds. However, the company also engages in pure token trading. RW3 also invests in publicly traded liquidity tokens, but they make up a maximum of 20% of its overall investment portfolio.

"We believe that many target markets are limited, and the establishment of these markets is only to meet the needs of the crypto-native world," he added, stating that RW3's target investments will help bridge Web2 and Web3.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。