Foresight Ventures Launches $10M Web3 Startup Fund, in Spite of Market Turmoil

Foresight Ventures (FV), a crypto fund with $400 million in assets under management (AUM), is launching an incubator program called Foresight X. The program will allocate $10 million to three different types of Web3 funding and collaborations.

Two programs have unlimited pools of ecosystem and research grants. The third is an eight-week incubator program for 30 early-stage projects or startups, which includes up to $300,000 in funding. Gitcoin, a crowdfunding platform, will share incentives and partner with FV to build collaborations and mentorships.

“We are particularly interested in projects that offer solutions to help scale [the crypto] industry for mainstream adoption,” Tony Cheng, general partner at Foresight Ventures, said in a press release. The grant application process is scheduled to open at the end of this year.

Prior to the recent downfall of FTX, which is still sending shockwaves throughout the crypto industry, Web3 funding in general had been dropping. There was around $3.3 billion in startup funding in the third quarter of this year, a nearly 50% drop compared with the second quarter, according to Crunchbase data. In 2021, almost $9.3 billion was invested in the final quarter of the year.

Despite the latest tsunami of sobering crypto news and trends, Foresight Ventures considers the period an opportunity to build. “We understand very well that bear markets are periods of massive innovation and growth,” co-founder Forest Bai said in the press release. The program will prioritize projects at every stage of development, “to accelerate” the crypto industry’s evolution.

Established in 2020, Foresight Ventures has invested in Web3, non-fungible token, gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Last year, AUM increased to $400 million from $80 million following FV's acquisition of Singapore-based exchange and trading platform, BitGet, and its limited partnership with BitKeep, a multi-chain digital wallet in Asia.

FV launched its first incubation program during CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 in Austin, Texas. The firm is also a sponsor of the Bitcoin Miami conference.

CORRECTION: An earlier version listed the eight-week incubator program had up to $200,000 in funding, instead of $300,000 and that BitKeep had been acquired instead of an LP.