This week, venture capital firm a16z, which specialises in blockchain infrastructure projects, took part in two cryptocurrency investment rounds. Pimlico is an infrastructure product designed to assist wallet developers in abstracting away some aspects of the payment process. A16z led a $4.2 million seed financing for the company. General partner at a16z Sriram Krishnan commended Kristof Gazso, the CEO of Pimlico, for attending the venture firm’s crypto startup bootcamp in Los Angeles. According to data provided by Richard Chen, general partner at 1confirmation, the usage of Pimlico’s account abstraction method has grown over the course of four months.
Additionally, A16z took part in a $5.5 million seed round for the Stackr developer tool. Stackr has developed a software development kit (SDK) that enables programmers to use general-purpose programming languages, such as JavaScript, to create Web3 applications. ‘Micro-rollups,’ which isolate proof from execution and favour development simplicity over decentralization, are made possible by the platform. Stackr also took part in the 2023 crypto startup school offered by a16z.
With these investments, a16z crypto is returning to supporting blockchain infrastructure businesses; according to CryptoRank, their most recent comparable action was in LayerZero‘s $120 million funding round in April. In other headlines, this week saw the announcement of Lightspeed Faction’s $285 million cryptocurrency startup fund, which will primarily focus on infrastructure and protocol-level projects.
Furthermore, $25 million in seed finance was obtained for the decentralized AI project Ritual, which was spearheaded by Archetype and included Accomplice and Robot Ventures. Ritual plans to introduce its platform in the first half of 2024, with an emphasis on enabling AI to protect privacy and transparency. The founders of Eigenlayer and NEAR Protocol provide advice to the project.
