Hong Kong blockchain fund raises $100m
Hong Kong blockchain specialist CMCC Global has reached a first close on its latest financial technology and web3 fund, raising the full targeted amount of USD 100m.
Industry strategic Block One (B1) was the cornerstone investor, having contributed USD 50m. Yen Shiau Sin, formerly director of strategic investments at B1 has joined CMCC as a managing partner.
LPs also include Pacific Century Group, Jebsen Capital, and Winklevoss Capital, a US family office focused on blockchain. They were joined by Yat Siu, founder of Animoca Brands, a local web3 gaming studio that has raised more than USD 630m since 2021. CMCC provided a 15% GP commitment.
B1 will also become a minority shareholder in CMCC’s holding entity, which is already backed by Pacific Century founder Richard Li, as well as the founders of Winklevoss. State Street is the fund administrator and EY is the auditor.
Titan Fund will take traditional equity stakes in early-stage blockchain companies as opposed to tokens or other digital assets. Its key verticals are infrastructure, fintech, and consumer applications such as gaming, metaverse, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
"With extremely high internet penetration and a relatively large unbanked population, Asia is primed to experience an explosion in consumer adoption of web3 applications,” CMCC co-founder Charlie Morris said in a statement. “Already, a third of global blockchain deals originate out of Asia today and this is a growing trend.”
Morris, formerly of Hong Kong VC firms Mind Fund and AAIC Ventures, set up CMCC alongside Martin Baumann, co-founder of local fintech platform Hyphen Group, in 2016. They have brought in Jonathan Cheung, formerly a crypto specialist at Brevan Howard, as a principal of Titan Fund.
CMCC brands itself as one of Asia’s oldest pureplay blockchain VC firms and an early investor in industry leaders such as Ethereum and Solana. It also has strategies targeting North America and Europe. Assets under management amounted to about USD 500m as of last year.
Early investment activity by Titan includes participation in a USD 20m round for Animoca Brands’ Mocaverse project, as well as a USD 1.7m seed round for digital storytelling platform Forkast. Warehoused deals include digital identity company Terminal 3, security provider Informal Systems, NFT platform KickzMeta, and a Y-combinator start-up focused on enterprise tokenization.
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