Image credits: NEAR Foundation
Swiss-based NEAR Foundation, a non-profit that supports the governance and development of the NEAR protocol, announced on Monday that it has launched a $100M (approximately €98.6M) venture capital fund and venture lab in partnership with Caerus Ventures.
NEAR will anchor the VC fund, with an initial closing of $50M and a target of $100M for seed series A investments.
Caerus Ventures: What you need to know
Founded by IMG executive Nathan Pillai, Caerus is an investment firm created to help, support, and invest in companies at the intersection of culture and Web3.
By operating a Venture Capital Fund and Venture Lab, Caerus plans to be an influential player in this space by deploying capital, technology, and resources to help empower the entertainment industry.
Caerus’ first investment will be in the Venture Lab, which will work exclusively with creators, talent, and franchise owners to build the next generation of platforms and applications that unlock value from their IP, reach, and influence.
The Venture Lab will attract Web3’s leading engineers, developers, and venture builders who want to create category-defining products around iconic talent and IP. In addition, it will offer cross-functional support to portfolio projects, says the company.
Pillai says, “We’re yet to imagine many use cases for how Web3 technologies will change how culture is experienced, entertainment is consumed, and value is distributed. And that was the genesis of Caerus: to be a catalyst for innovation that unleashes a new generation of platforms, applications, and services across sport, music, film, TV, fashion, art, and gaming which offer greater equity for talent and consumers alike.”
“I’ve been hugely impressed by NEAR’s value proposition for developers and users, but more importantly, their mission to empower creators and consumers of culture with more control over their assets. So we’re creating this partnership to help revolutionise the existing multi-layered entertainment ecosystems, growing the market size while promoting greater equity,” he adds.
NEAR Foundation: What you need to know
The NEAR Foundation has developed the NEAR protocol, a high-performance carbon-neutral blockchain designed to be super-fast, incredibly secure, and infinitely scalable. The platform allows anyone to build at scale and deploy at pace.
“With NEAR, blockchain mass adoption is possible,” claims the company.
With 18M accounts and 550,000 members, the NEAR community is home to innovators, developers, and contributors supporting the protocol’s platform, ecosystem, and applications.
NEAR is backed by top VCs such as A16Z, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Blockchain.com, and Baidu Ventures.
Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, says, “Our cultural passions for live sport, film or music have historically been leveraged to on-ramp billions of consumers to new technologies. The creators, talent, and franchises with reach and influence spearheaded that growth and will now drive the adoption of blockchain at scale. But this time, they and their fans will have greater access to the value created.”
He adds, “We’re backing Caerus because they have a uniquely differentiated proposition and robust investment thesis predicated on the tokenisation of entertainment and decentralisation of rights and licensing. In this new economy, we believe that new incentive structures, native business, and funding models will empower creators with more control of what they produce and the rewards that come.”
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