On the afternoon of June 1, the investment arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Binance Labs, announced that it had raised $500 million for its debut start-up fund, with backing from investment firms DST Global and Breyer Capital as well as other unnamed companies and corporations. This is the first time the company has officially raised a VC fund with financing from external investors.
Binance launched a new fund when Bitcoin in particular and the market in general were sharply falling in price. Bitcoin has dropped more than 50% since its ATH near $69,000 in November 2021. That has taken a toll on top crypto companies, even the richest billionaires in the crypto world have lost billions of dollars amid the crash.
Even so, Binance Labs is still hoping to find new opportunities, especially for potential developers in the Web3 space, which Binance sees as the next big thing in tech. Binance Labs plans to allocate the $500 million fund to projects across various stages – incubation, early stage, and late stage growth.
“The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse, social, and more”, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance said.
Binance Labs was founded in 2018 and since then has invested in and incubated more than 100 projects globally. Some of the companies featured in its portfolio include 1inch, Axie Infinity, Dune Analytics, Elrond, Polygon, and The Sandbox.
In the latest related news, Binance is also planning to take a $500 million stake in Twitter to support CEO Tesla in his acquisition of this social media platform. By this way, the firm hopes to boost its aim of “bringing social media and Web3 together.”
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