Singapore’s Cake DeFi launches $100m corporate VC arm
Singapore-based decentralised finance platform Cake DeFi has earmarked USD 100m for a venture capital program that will target web3, gaming, and financial technology start-ups globally.
Cake plans to deploy this sum within two years with a special interest in metaverse, non-fungible token (NFT), blockchain, and e-sports companies that bring synergistic value to its core business. The first investment is US media and events start-up, The Edge Of Company, which is developing various ecosystems in the NFT and web3 space.
Cake DeFi Ventures is led by Cake’s co-founders Julian Hosp (CEO) and U-Zyn Chua (chief technology officer) along with Nicholas Khoo, a newly appointed investment partner. Khoo is an investment committee member at Singapore-based fintech and blockchain investor Global Fund, which also operates a special purpose acquisition company platform.
Cake positions itself as a fully transparent platform providing access to decentralised finance services and applications that enable users to generate returns from their crypto and digital assets. Its core offerings let users put their assets to work in liquidity mining, staking, and lending.
The company claims to have seen 10x growth in its registered customer base, with more than USD 1bn customer assets, in 2021. In the same year, customers were said to have received around USD 230m in rewards.
“By launching Cake DeFi Ventures, we want to bring cryptocurrency and blockchain capabilities to the world,” Hosp said in a statement. “Cake DeFi is one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing fintech platforms. The projects that we invest in can expect to receive strong support scaling globally.”
Hosp, a former trauma surgeon, is a figure of some controversy in the crypto and blockchain industry, having been accused by various industry publications of affiliation with a pyramid scheme earlier in his career.
His previous company, a crypto Visa card provider called TenX, also experienced significant controversy, with his co-founder Toby Hoenisch accused of hacking USD 11bn worth of Ethererum from one of the company’s smart contract schemes.
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