So. Many. New. Company. Funds. – Tech Crunch

Prove again that venture capital investors have more dry powder than ever before, this week started with a flurry of venture capital fund closing announcements across all sectors and at all stages. This indicates that LPs are staying active amid this dissonant moment in technology, and despite some challenges ahead for emerging fund managers, that’s news.

Our team has a good roster in progress:

• B Capital has closed $250 million in capital commitments for its Ascent Fund II, its first dedicated seed fund that will invest in pre-seed through Series A companies globally, but with a focus on emphasis on the United States and Asia.
• Cathay Innovation and AfricInvest have announced a final close of €110 million on their Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, a pan-African fund they started working on together in 2019.
• AM Ventures has closed a $100 million fund that will target early-stage companies focused on industrial and commercial 3D printing applications.
• Tribe Capital, which manages $1.5 billion in assets, has raised $25 million from investors to launch a cryptocurrency incubator program.
• Crypto asset manager Valkyrie plans to raise between $25 million and $30 million for a venture capital fund under its new arm, Valkyrie Ventures, to invest in “the infrastructure layer” between Web 2.0 and the Internet. Web3. The company, best known for launching one of the only SEC-approved Bitcoin futures ETFs in the United States, is branching out into a new asset class: venture capital.
• Fundrise, a company that lets anyone invest in real estate with a minimum investment of just $10, is raising a new $1 billion growth capital fund to invest in early-stage tech startups. The new fund will be evergreen, meaning it will have an indefinite lifespan, a structure similar to Homebrew and some SoftBank funds.
• Finally, and this is not a new fund but a new program to attract more fund managers, VC Include has announced its 2022 scholarship focused on new BIPOC fund managers. Aspiring US-based investors looking to raise between $10 million and $100 million for their venture capital or private equity fund are welcome to apply.

Here are plenty of other tasty bites from earlier this week and last week:

• The UAE has secured $800 million in capital commitments for a new fund that will embark on space initiatives.
• Battery Ventures is charging up its capital rollout after securing $3.8 billion in commitments to three new funds that will invest in all-stage startups in areas including enterprise software, fintech, healthcare and data . Battery Ventures XIV and a companion fund are taking $3.3 billion, and the $530 million Battery Ventures Select Fund II is a vehicle that was created to make additional investments primarily in the portfolio companies of the other funds. the company.
• Now let’s move on to Iter Investments where he closed his first fund with over $20 million in committed capital to deploy capital in the emerging psychedelic market. As our colleague Anna Heim reported in May, psychedelics are an area that saw some early hype and also some early failures, but some investors are taking an interest in what they think is still quite young. Iter, founded by Dustin Robinson, has a portfolio of 16 companies in the market.
• Meanwhile, Collaborative Fund announced its new Collab SOS fund with $200 million in commitments to invest in Series A and B companies operating in the sustainable economy across materials, ingredients, energy and supply chains. Sponsors came from some of the biggest material buyers, agricultural experts and industry leaders, according to the firm.
• London-based auction house Christie’s announced this week that it would set up its own venture capital arm called Christie’s Ventures aimed at investing seed capital in seed technology that would help collectors buy and sell more art, either digitally or through another method.
• Lightspeed has raised $500 million for its new India and Southeast Asia fund, TC’s Manish Singh reports, adding to a tranche of more than $7 billion pooled in new funds. As Singh points out, the firm has a team of nine partners in India and Southeast Asia and nearly doubles the size of its fund assets.