Former Circle Ventures Executives to Lead VanEck's New $30M Venture Initiative
Investment giant VanEck is diving into early-stage venture capital with the launch of a $30-million VanEck Ventures fund for cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence startups.
The early-stage venture capital project was announced on October 9 and greatly extends the company's move into emergent technologies beyond existing spot Bitcoin ETF products.
The new venture fund will be spearheaded by industry veterans Wyatt Lonergan and Juan Lopez, both formerly of Circle Ventures. While at Circle Internet Financial, the duo oversaw investments of more than $50 million in over a dozen early-stage companies, from infrastructure projects all the way to consumer applications.
VanEck Investments will focus its investments in several key areas: tokenized assets, internet-native financial marketplaces, and stablecoin-enabled and tokenized capital market payment systems.
It is expected that the fund will make 25 to 35 investments ranging from $500,000 to $1 million in each company. Of the capital in the fund, about two-thirds has been raised from outside investors, while VanEck invested the balance internally.
According to Juan Lopez, this is the best time to make such investments: "As several on-chain utilities focused on programmability and compliance come to market with growing regulatory clarity, it's never been a more exciting time to build," he said.
The fund already lined up four investments but will not disclose details. In addition to traditional equity investments, VanEck Ventures would also take stakes in companies in return for project-linked tokens.
VanEck Chief Executive Officer Jan van Eck framed the initiative as a natural next step in the company's tradition of innovation in new investment opportunities. "From pioneering an approach to gold investing in 1968 to recognizing the disruptive potential of Bitcoin in 2017, embracing a long-term view on transformative opportunities has always been part of our investment philosophy," he said.