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Please enjoy the March Deal Flow Digest, a monthly newsletter recapping recent web3 funding rounds.
Seed Raises in Context
The ever brilliant Coinstack combed through Pitchbooks to build out a yearly crypto report with a great find that made us pause: valuations are up over previous years.
Though the data above is pulled from a limited number of 2023 seed round deals, Pitchbook’s finding of higher median valuations for seed raises in 2023 compared to 2022 bucks the feeling that (median) valuations have come down during the bear market. VCs are giving similar dollars per round at more favorable valuations for companies, though they have become much more selective in who they choose to fund given the decline in funding rounds in Pitchbook’s (and our own) data.
The number of funding rounds remains depressed from early 2022 numbers, but in March, funding rose to month over month $300M up to a final total of $1410M. This is the largest funding total since the market plunged after October 2022. VC activity is slowly but surely accelerating…
Top Five Crypto Funding Rounds
eToro | $250 Million | 3/20/23
Trading platform eToro has secured $250 million in funding at a $3.5 billion valuation. Investors include ION Group, Social Leverage, SoftBank and Spark Capital.
Character.AI | $150 Million | Series A | 3/22/23
Character.AI today announced it has closed a $150 million Series A fundraising round at a $1 billion valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from previous investors, including Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), Elad Gil, SV Angel and A Capital. Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Sarah Wang will join Character.AI’s board of directors. The funds raised allow Character.AI to continue its significant growth trajectory by expanding its compute abilities resulting in a more sophisticated model with advanced reasoning and greater accuracy, delivering new features and capabilities to users, and expanding its engineering team.
Raisin | $64.57 Million | Series E | 3/23/23
Berlin-based fintech Raisin has raised €60 million(about $64.566 million) from new and existing investors in a Series E funding round. Two new investors participated in the Series E round, one of which is a global financial services institution and the other is M&G's Catalyst, which is a $6 billion purpose-led global private assets strategy. Goldman Sachs was among Raisin's existing investors to participate in the fundraising.
Believer | $55 Million | Series A | 3/6/23
Believer has raised $55 million to create a new game studio in Los Angeles. Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading the Series A, with Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) also participating; Other investors include BITKRAFT Ventures, Riot Games, 1Up Ventures, Don Thompson's Cleveland Avenue, Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company, and other venture partners.
EigenLabs | $50 Million | Series A | 3/6/23
Staking protocol developer EigenLabs has raised $50 million in a Series A round led by Blockchain Capital. Other backers in the round included Electric Capital, Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Finality Capital Partners, andCoinbase Ventures, among others.
Click to see all of March’s funding rounds here:
Hackathons
Upcoming
ETH Capetown Apr 19-21
Africa’s first ETHGlobal Hackathon
ETH Taipei Apr 21-23
Focus on DeFi, Zk, and building within the Ethereum ecosystem
Delphi Labs Cosmos Hackathon May 1-8
Pitch your idea and team for a chance to win prizes and a spot in the upcoming Delphi Labs Accelerator with $150,000 in prizes
Recently Completed
ETH Global Tokyo Hackathon Apr 14-16
$175,000 in prizes from prominent Dapps and DAOs
ZK Hack Lisbon Mar 31- Apr 2
Hackathon focused on zero-knowledge applications
Scaling Ethereum: Mar 10-29
Virtual. ETHGlobal Hackathon. Three weeks of hacking and summits devoted to pushing the envelope and building the future infrastructure of our Ethereum
ETH Porto Mar 16-18
Two-day conference and hackathon to demystify and hear about tangible use cases in the fields of Agriculture and Fishery, Public Goods and Governance, Decentralized Science, and many more.
NFT LA Hackathon - Mar 17-20
$10k+ first prize, additional prizes, bounties, networking, 100's of hackers, prominent judges and industry-leading supporters to build the future of Web3 together.
We are Millions: Mar 1-21
Virtual. “We are millions building a better web. Let’s not f* up this time.” Events and workshops over three weeks sponsored by Swarm, Nordic Game, KIWIX, and Gitcoin
Grizzlython: Feb 2 - Mar 14
Virtual. Over $700,000 in prizes for Solana projects across mobile, payments, consumer, infrastructure, defi, and DAOs
ETHDenver #BUIDL Week: Feb 24-Mar 1
More than 6,000 developers participated in the hackathon and almost 400 projects were submitted for review. An estimated $100,000 was awarded to 18 finalists. Almost $1 million was further handed to developers in the form of bounties. This year, 62 sponsors distributed 180 bounties.
Demo Days
Upcoming Demo Days
Flori Ventures Web3 X Credit Demo Day Apr 18
a16z Crypto Startup School Demo Day May 24
Recently Completed Demo Days
FILVC Demo Day Mar 21
LongHash Axelerator Demo Day Apr 4
Deep Tech (BoostVC) Demo Day Apr 4
YCombinator Demo Day Apr 5
That’s a wrap for March. Next month we’ll send it out on time :)
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Good luck out there!
Ben & Brady
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