The Ukrainian venture capital firm TA Ventures told AIN.UA that it is going to significantly increase the size of its fund — from $50 million to $75 million. According to Viktoriya Tigipko, founder and managing partner of TA Ventures, the firm will use the additional $25 million to invest in a new direction — Web3, blockchain, and a metaverse. Viktoriya Tigipko and TA Ventures partner Oleg Malenkov, who will be responsible for the new direction, explained why they are launching a new vertical and what they will invest in.

As the representatives of the firm told AIN.UA, they had actually started investing in Web3 startups earlier, but only now are they creating a separate vertical and additionally expanding the fund size. Over the past year, TA Ventures added the following startups to its portfolio:

  • Gemini is the Winklevoss brothers’ group of companies, which includes the crypto exchange Gemini Exchange, the NFT platform Nifty Gateway, the asset management platform Stablecoin, and other projects.
  • Aerial is a startup that has developed a tool for tracking and offsetting the carbon footprint, including CO2 emissions from the creation of NFTs.
  • Party.Space is a platform featuring three-dimensional virtual corporate and themed parties, celebrations, seminars, and gaming activities.
  • Moonpay is a company that offers the fastest way to buy and sell cryptocurrencies using convenient payment tools such as credit cards, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.
  • Alt is a marketplace for selling alternative assets and collectibles that also plans to work with NFTs.
  • Brickit is an app that helps rebuild the old Lego models into new models and characters. It scans your Lego parts collection and shows you what items you can create with them.

We are very far from full decentralization, so at this stage, we are investing in a wide range of consumer DeFi, DAO, NF, and infrastructure solutions for the ecosystem. We started investing in Web3 at the end of last year. To understand how fast the industry is changing — one of the most popular blockchain platforms in the world, Solana, was launched in 2020. Our investment strategy adapts to the new paradigm but still keeps its key components: investing in early-stage startups, focusing on the team, co-investing with our netbook, and global markets,” comments Oleg Malenkov.

Traditional venture capital firms and hedge funds Sequoia, Benchmark, Coatue, Tiger, and others have been investing in Web3 projects for some time without much focus on the industry. Thanks to the emergence of traditional players in the market, an alternative asset class is already developing, and there is a demand for it. TA Ventures does not want to ignore the new direction and the startups operating in this market. Moreover, this direction has been growing extremely fast lately. For example, in 2021 alone, cryptocurrency projects raised more investments than in the previous ten years.

At the same time, TA Ventures continues to invest in companies according to its core strategy: early-stage startups from the digital health, transportation technology, enterprise software, and direct-to-consumer sectors. It has closed about 50 deals and invested more than $10 million in less than a year.

According to Tigipko, in the near future, TA Ventures plans to open a new fund, 2-3 times larger than the existing one.