Dragonfly Capital, a crypto-focused investment firm, announced this morning it has raised $650 million for its third venture fund.
The Dragonfly Fund III handily eclipses the firm’s previous funds, which raised $100 million in 2018 and $225 million in 2021. Its limited partners include Tiger Global, KKR, Sequoia China, and the endowments of multiple Ivy League universities, among others.
Dragonfly invests in crypto companies across the spectrum of decentralized finance, smart contracts, NFTs, Web3 development, DAO infrastructure, and the metaverse.
Since the firm’s inception in 2018, it has invested in almost 60 companies, including Ethereum rivals NEAR Protocol and Avalanche, data firm Dune Analytics, and metaverse land investor Everyrealm.
Historically, Dragonfly has participated primarily in early-round funding for crypto startups. The size of the firm’s third fund will allow it, according to a blog post by Dragonfly’s managing partner Haseeb Qureshi, to lead Series B or later rounds for companies, staying with them longer into their maturity.
“With this newest fund we’ll be backing the most disruptive founders, protocol builders, and hackers of this generation,” Qureshi wrote.
Paradigm Co-Founder on Record $2.5B Fund and Next Era of Crypto
Paradigm is not big on attention. Unlike the crypto world's other investing behemoth, Andreessen Horowitz, the three-year-old firm stays out of the media limelight as it quietly builds an empire. But the announcement today of a new $2.5 billion fund—the largest ever for a crypto firm—was big enough news for co-founder Matt Huang to agree to speak publicly about what Paradigm is up to. Huang, a veteran of VC giant Sequoia, says he and his partner, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, started Paradigm...
Dragonfly’s round comes at a time when crypto-centric venture capital investment is at an all-time high. Last month, Kathryn Haun, formerly of Andreessen Horowitz, announced a $1.5 billion fund for Web3 ventures; in January, FTX announced a $2 billion Web3 fund; Paradigm’s fund, launched in November, raised a record $2.5 billion.
