Participated · Seed · Mar 2024

mmERCH builds blockchain-enabled, generative-design fashion collections of singular, one-of-a-kind garments it calls “neo-couture,” each paired with a digital twin on the blockchain. The company leverages AI and generative algorithms to produce unique physical items accompanied by non-fungible digital counterparts that verify authenticity and scarcity. Revealed in late 2023 by Founder and CEO Colby Mugrabi, mmERCH is supported by a team of founders, creators, collectors, curators, artists, academics, and authors. The brand targets a community at the intersection of art, fashion, and technology and plans to launch its inaugural collection in April 2024. mmERCH raised a $6.4 million seed round at a $25.7 million post-money valuation to expand operations. Proceeds will be used to build a proprietary technology stack, grow the engineering team, and fund subsequent collections.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2024

Oyl is building a Bitcoin Ordinals wallet designed to support in-wallet trading of Ordinals. The platform is set to roll out in the coming weeks and aims to be the first to offer native in-wallet trading for Ordinals. Oyl focuses on bringing NFT-like functionality and DeFi primitives to the Bitcoin ecosystem via the Ordinals Protocol. The Ordinals Protocol lets users mint tokens by embedding data into small Bitcoin transactions, enabling tradable assets on Bitcoin. Oyl has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding to support its launch and early operations. Multiple Ethereum NFT funds participating in the round signal cross-chain interest from NFT investors in Bitcoin-focused infrastructure.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2023

Atlas is a Vienna, Austria–based company building a 3D generative AI platform for creating custom, IP-specific assets and virtual worlds for games, virtual ecosystems and XR. Its suite of AI products helps enterprise clients and creators generate assets and experiences much faster than traditional pipelines. The company plans to use new funding to enhance R&D and deepen collaborations with game developers and brands to further its gaming experiences. Ben James is the CEO & Founder and leads the company’s product and partnership efforts. Atlas previously received grants in 2020 supporting AI work aligned with the European Union’s High-Level Expert Group on Trustworthy AI. The current funding will be released across three years and is conditioned on milestone achievement. Atlas offers a suite of AI products that help enterprise and next-gen creators generate custom, IP-specific 3D assets for video games, virtual ecosystems and XR experiences. The company partners with game developers and brands, including Square Enix, Consortium9 and Shrapnel, to scale asset development and lower production times. Led by CEO Ben James, Atlas is headquartered in Vienna, Austria and is deployed worldwide. The new capital will be used to accelerate expansion of Atlas’ developer solutions and to build out a self-service 3D AI creator platform. Atlas is supported by strategic advisors and angel investors Timmu Tõke, Abel Mathew and Geoff Renaud.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2023

Lens is a decentralized protocol designed to serve as infrastructure for social and consumer apps; users own their identity and content and apps act as clients to the blockchain. It defines social primitives — accounts, usernames, graphs, feeds, and groups — and supports developer-created rules for access control, token gating, and subscriber-only feeds. Lens v3 is a complete protocol overhaul that moves the stack from Polygon to zkSync and validiums to dramatically lower transaction costs and enable consumer-scale usage. The project powers apps on Lens v2 including Zora, Hey, Kaira, and Orb, and the team aims for interactions to cost roughly as much as cloud server costs so developers can absorb them. Avara announced a $31 million funding round for Lens, and the Lens team plans to launch the Lens v3 mainnet in the first quarter of 2025. Avara founder Stani Kulechov frames the effort around decentralization that gives users more power and enables new revenue-sharing models for creators. Lens Protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol developed by Aave aimed at creating an open, neutral layer for social apps. The protocol focuses on giving users more control over their data and enabling developers to build varied use cases from gaming to social media. Lens has been in beta since May 2022 and so far has granted access to a limited set of users while additional desktop and mobile applications are being built (Orb, Riff, Enso Collective). The team says the roadmap will remain in beta until infrastructure and the ecosystem grow sufficiently to open protocol access more broadly. Lens aims to be a flexible, neutral protocol that shares monetization across contributors rather than being owned by a single incumbent. The protocol raised $15M to expand its ecosystem and continue development; there is no valuation available.

Participated · Seed · Jan 2023

StoryCo operates an open storytelling platform where creators and passionate fans connect to collaborate, co-create, and co-own story franchise IP alongside established Hollywood talent. The company raised $6M in a Seed round to accelerate growth and expand operations. StoryCo’s inaugural production, The Disco Ball, is led by Story Architect Kyle Killen and artists shelby and sandy and releases on the StoryCo platform in early 2023. The Disco Ball is an immersive, interactive narrative that unfolds across the StoryCo site, social media, and real-world interactions, inviting the community to decipher puzzles, discover artifacts, and solve quests. Community members can claim a Disco Ball StoryPass to collect and earn digital art tied to key story moments and characters, with a culminating rare digital art piece that conveys the right to help control the future of the story.