(Bloomberg) -- VanEck, a roughly $115 billion asset manager, is entering the world of venture capital investing with a $30 million early-stage fund that will focus on fintech, digital assets and artificial-intelligence startups.
The fund is led by Wyatt Lonergan and Juan Lopez, who previously headed Circle Ventures, which they left earlier this year. There, they invested more than $50 million into more than 100 early-stage companies, Lonergan said in an interview.
The VanEck venture-capital fund will make 25 to 35 investments, with amounts of up to $1 million, Lonergan said. The fund has already made four investments that are yet to be announced. Startups of interest may use stablecoins for fast settlement and payments, or help with compliance as a slew of traditional companies look to start using blockchain and stablecoins in the coming months.
“We think it’s going to be a Cambrian explosion of fintech products, because the infrastructure is ready to go,” Lonergan said.
With a market cap of about $170 billion, stablecoins have become a pillar of the crypto ecosystem, helping traders go in and out of the market at times of volatility and enabling fast payments worldwide. Payments giant PayPal Holdings Inc. launched its own stablecoin last year, and last week card-network Visa Inc. said it’s launching a platform for banks to issue stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Robinhood Markets Inc. and Revolut Ltd. are among companies considering launching stablecoins, Bloomberg reported earlier.
Circle Internet Financial Ltd. issues the world’s second most popular stablecoin, USDC. The company said earlier this year that it had confidentially submitted plans to launch an initial public offering, more than a year after it scrapped a bid to list its shares via a blank-check deal.
VanEck was founded in 1955, and as of the end of August managed almost $114 billion in assets, including mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and institutional accounts.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.