US and Japan-based gumi Cryptos Capital raises $110M early-stage fund to invest in blockchain startups

Gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC), a blockchain-focused venture capital firm based in United States and Japan, announced Wednesday the completion of raising $110 million for its second blockchain-focused early-stage fund (GCC Fund II).

The fund will target exceptional developers, projects, DAOs, guilds, apps, games, and protocols at any layer at the earliest stage and is chain-agnostic, and will invest in both equity and tokens. gCC said in a statment.

GCC expects to invest between $500,000 to $5 million per project through both initial and follow-on investments.

“Think of us as blockchain’s experienced, high-conviction, high trust, hands-on value adding, long time preference, unicorn to megacorn, builder-focused all-in venture society. Our approach for this fund will be ‘thinking ahead’. We develop advanced thinking across the blockchain space. We’re looking for exceptional ‘gumicorn’ founders in advanced subsectors that have the potential to be sector leaders and disrupt global industries,” said Rui Zhang, Managing Partner of gCC.

GCC Fund II will be led by experienced investor operators – Managing Partners, Hironao Kunimitsu, Rui Zhang, and Miko Matsumura. All three partners have founded and exited companies via merger and acquisition (M&A) or initial public offering (IPO).

“We live in the Experimental Age. The existing institutions and infrastructure including social infrastructure, governance, financial services and big tech are demonstrably failing us. Because the way forward is unknown, there’s a strong appetite for experimentation. Tokens represent monetary experimentation powering Web3, DAOs and guilds are governance experiments. Avatars represent ‘personality experiments’ whether backed by individuals, bots or groups. NFTs are experimental digital assets. The metaverse is a collection of experimental realities,” said Miko Matsumura, gCC Managing Partner.

Portfolio leadership teams will also have access to gCC’s exceptional global network of portfolio company founders, legal and financial advisors, token economy designers, token liquidity and market making partners and global investor base. GCC has a unique geographic footprint straddling with headquarters in both San Francisco and Tokyo.

“We have unique access to both Silicon Valley startup culture and capital markets as well as access to the Japan market. Japan is also home to unique intellectual property assets especially in the fast-growing gaming sector. With our unique geographic advantage, we can help ambitious projects grow faster,” said Hironao Kunimitsu, Managing Partner at gCC.

This fund follows gCC’s launch of gCC’s record breaking performance on its Fund I. gCC Fund I is above the top 1 percent of all Venture Capital Funds by performance according to data from Angel List. In addition, companies in the gCC portfolio have themselves raised more than $1 billion since January 2020 to fuel growth.

The firm earlier raised $21 million for gCC Fund I that backed seed stage founders. With 36 portfolio companies, the fund has already backed many of the strongest entrepreneurs in the space including leading the strategic seed round of non fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea and placing a seed investment into Yield Guild Gaming. It has many strong early-stage investments in portfolio including unicorns like Celsius Network, Qredo, Agoric, Astar, 1inch, VEGA protocol and more.

GCC is a blockchain-focused venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley and Japan. It focuses exclusively on backing the best global entrepreneurs (gumicorn founders) building unicorn to megacorn sized outcomes. It has invested in the earliest stages in unicorns such as OpenSea, Yield Guild Gaming, Celsius Networks, 1Inch Network, Qredo, Agoric, VEGA protocol and Astar. Notable investors in gCC include gumi Inc, Shinsei Bank, Cygames, Mistletoe Venture Partners, Marui Group, Celsius Network, GMF Capital, Polygon and others.

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