Emurgo Launched $100 Million Investment Fund to Power DeFi and NFT Projects Building on Cardano

Emurgo, the commercial branch of the Cardano ecosystem, has released a new product focusing on investing in startup protocols that want to build on the Cardano blockchain. This comes after several notable announcements from Charles Hoskinson’s team in the past few days.

• The official press release reads that the new investment vehicle, which will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the parent company Emurgo, will have two separate branches with distinctive approaches.
• Emurgo Africa will “support more than three hundred regional startups through seed funding and incubation, to ultimately have Cardano’s blockchain adopted as the technological platform standard in Africa for socially impactful solutions.”
• This will continue Cardano’s already started initiatives in the continent. As previously reported, the project made multiple partnerships with local organizations to issue digital identities and provide education.
• Emurgo Ventures will focus on other developed markets. It will aim to facilitate the building of solutions and services on the Cardano network by becoming the seed investor in a “variety” of such startups from industries such as NFTs and DeFi.
• Emurgo has previously completed roughly a dozen direct investments in blockchain projects through its partnership with SOSV.

• “We are more focused than ever on accelerating the development of Cardano’s ecosystem with a rich mix of decentralized services catering to a global community that is increasing in overall blockchain awareness.” – commented Emurgo’s CEO Ken Kodama.

• Earlier this week, Cardano also partnered with Chainlink to develop DeFi smart contacts and announced the first stablecoin to go live on its blockchain – Djed.