Venture arm launched by DeFi giant: Uniswap to invest in other crypto companies
- ByStartupStory | April 12, 2022
The company behind the popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, Uniswap Labs, has launched a venture capital arm in order to invest in web3 projects.
According to the company, the new division, Uniswap Labs Ventures, will invest in companies across various stages and areas within web3, from infrastructure to developer tools and consumer-facing applications. Though the company did not share any details on how large these checks will be or how much balance sheet capital will be dedicated to the fund, investments will be made directly from the company’s balance sheet, The Block first reported.
Alongside Uniswap’s chief operating officer, Mary-Catherine Lader, the firm is tapping Matteo Leibowitz to head up the venture arm. Starting in August 2020, Leibowitz previously worked at Uniswap as a strategy lead and prior to that, at The Block was a research analyst for nearly two years, according to Linkedin.
Uniswap invested in 11 companies and protocols across the web3 ecosystem, including Tenderly, Aave, LayerZero, MakerDAO, Compound Protocol and PartyDAO, before launching this dedicated venture arm, the company says. The Ethereum-native exchange appears to have largely backed Other companies that are also in the Ethereum ecosystem has also appeared to have been largely backed by the Ethereum-native exchange.
To play an active role in on and off-chain governance “when relevant, has been planned by its new ventures team, it says. Plans to participate in the governance systems of MakerDAO, Aave, Compound and Ethereum Name Service (ENS) so far have also been announced specifically.
About a week after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Uniswap Labs, as well as its founder and its own backers — Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Paradigm, and Union Square Ventures — for allegedly engaging in rampant fraud” on the exchange, the news came in. Most recently in August 2020, Uniswap Labs raised $11 million in a Series A round, which a16z led.
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