New Venture Funds Announced Amid Quiet Week For Capital Raises

According to Blockworks, this week saw fewer venture capital raises and fund announcements, but the ones that did emerge made significant impacts. Halo Capital, a new fund launched by Bhavin Vaid and Daniel Howard, son of Alan Howard, announced a $25 million fund focused on a data-driven and research-based investment approach. Both Vaid and Howard, veterans of growth equity fund 10T, plan to take a generalist approach to the digital asset space. Howard emphasized the evolving nature of the industry and the importance of investing across a broad range of subsectors to capture value. Vaid highlighted the unique combination of traditional research, quantitative data science, and a flexible crypto-native approach in their investment strategy. The fund has already invested in two projects: Andrena, a DePIN project, and Bima, a protocol focused on creating a stablecoin collateralized by bitcoin. Vaid noted the maturation of the token economy, with new launches and existing tokens reaching significant market caps, and the importance of valuing the ecosystem based on both traditional and crypto-native metrics. Halo Capital aims to act as hands-on angel investors in their ventures. Another notable fund announcement this week came from Asylum Ventures, which introduced a $55 million generalist fund. Nick Chirls, founder of Notation Capital, which has invested in projects like Solana and NEAR, is the general partner of the new fund. Jonathan Wu, former head of growth at the Aztec Network, joined as an investment partner. Chirls expressed his belief in early-stage founders as artists who are passionate about new and unusual ideas, often misunderstood for long periods. In other funding news, cybersecurity firm Hypernative raised $16 million in a Series A round with participation from Bloccelerate, Boldstart Ventures, and CMT Digital. Puffpaw, a crypto project built on Berachain aimed at helping people quit smoking through vaping, raised $6 million in a round led by Lemniscap, with Volt Capital and Folius Ventures also participating. The week may have been quieter in terms of the number of announcements, but the new funds and investments highlight ongoing interest and activity in the digital asset space.