Venture Capital Firm NFX Adds $62.6M in Follow-On Investments, Including Crypto Companies

NFX, a venture capital firm with over $1 billion in total capital commitments, has added $62.61 million to its second fund for follow-on investments. They include crypto portfolio companies such as fiat on-ramp startup Ramp, code collaboration network Radicle and minimalist blockchain Celestia.

NFX's Fund II launched in 2019 with $275 million committed for investments across all sectors. Its $450 million Fund III debuted in October to back pre-seed and seed stage companies.

An amended regulatory filing on July 11 showed the company had increased Fund II to $337.61 million. NFX confirmed to CoinDesk that the additional funds were for follow-on investments in high-conviction companies in the fund’s portfolio.

“We have a strong pipeline of crypto and non-crypto companies in Fund II that are opportunistically planning to raise small rounds to further extend their runway," NFX general partner Morgan Beller told CoinDesk in an email. "We raised this extra funding to continue backing them during this uncertain market."

Growing crypto investments

Beller co-created Facebook’s libra stablecoin project (the company is now Meta and libra, renamed diem, was recently shut down) before joining NFX in September 2020. The company's Fund III – which has more of a focus on crypto investments than Fund II – launched shortly thereafter. Fund III capital has been deployed to “numerous great startups at the intersection of crypto, [decentralized finance], blockchain infrastructure, Web3 gaming and more,” said Beller.

Portfolio companies for Fund III include blockchain infrastructure startup Mysten Labs, blockchain-based savings account provider Gelt, Web3 game studio Azra Games and Fair.xy, a provider of non-fungible token (NFT) infrastructure.

Beller said the “litmus test for Web3 investments is: Does this platform lower the barrier to entry for Web3 to developers, enterprises and/or consumers? And we plan to continue doing more of the same, but we also have some new tricks up our sleeve. Stay tuned."

Bear market investments

Asked about deploying investments in a bear market, Beller said the firm is “more bullish than ever.”

“We recognize the market has changed but there are some silver linings to this because 1) prices have come down (which we believe is genuinely good for longterm-thinking founders), 2) businesses with network effects are further being solidified and 3) a lot of the shoddy projects are dying out,” Beller said. “In some ways, we’re only more confident deploying in today’s market than six to 12 months ago."