Which crypto projects has Sequoia, the king of venture capital, bet on recently?

Sequoia Capital, with $85 billion in assets under management, is one of the most prominent venture capital firms to date and has invested more than $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency industry across eight funds.

Sequoia Capital focuses on incubation, seed, startup, early and growth stage investments in private companies. They have invested in a range of successful companies including Apple, Google, Oracle, PayPal, Stripe, YouTube, Instagram and Yahoo.

Sequoia recently announced the split of its regional branches (India and China), with the Indian branch called Peak XV Partners and the Chinese branch called HongShan.

More details here:

Their crypto-focused funds include:

• Sequoia Capital Crypto Fund: Liquidity Tokens and Digital Assets ($500-600 million)

• Sequoia Capital India: Venture and Growth Fund ($2 billion), SEA Web3 Fund ($850 million)

• Sequoia Capital China: 4 funds focused on crypto and fintech ($9 billion)

Investment focus:

• High-growth technology startups across multiple industries, including fintech, healthtech, consumer tech, and more.

• Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology

• Diversify investments into companies led by unique groups

Sequoia’s key focus areas in the crypto industry are blockchain services and blockchain infrastructure. Here are five of their most important recent investments in the crypto industry.

LayerZero

• Funding amount: $120 million

• Round: Series B

• Lead investor: a16z

• Other investors: Sequoia Capital, Christie's, Samsung's Next, OpenSea, Circle Ventures

LayerZero is a blockchain interoperability protocol that aims to be the base layer for data transmission and communication across different networks. LayerZero is used in various DApps such as Stargate, Aptos Bridge, and L2s such as Arbitrum and zkSync.

Taiko

• Funding: $22 million

• Round: Seed Round

• Lead investors: Sequoia China, Generative Ventures

• Other investors: IOSG Ventures, GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Patricio Worthalter, Tim Beiko, Anthony Sassano

Taiko is a Type 1 ZK Rollup scaling solution that aims to achieve EVM equivalence and Ethereum equivalence, which means that its Rollup supports all existing Ethereum smart contracts, DApps, developer tools and infrastructure.

TinyTap

• Funding: $8.5 million

• Investors: Sequoia China, Polygon, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital

TinyTap is a platform for creating and selling educational mobile games for children, fostering a community of creators from around the world. Creators mint NFTs for their games, giving them a new way to monetize their creations. TinyTap offers a revenue sharing model where creators share in the revenue generated by the sale of their work on the platform.

Kaito

• Funding: $5.3 million

• Round: Seed Round

• Lead investor: Dragonfly

• Other investors: Sequoia Capital, Jane Street, Mirana Ventures, Folius Ventures, Alpha Lab

Kaito is an AI-driven cryptographic research information database designed to solve the problem of cryptographic information fragmentation. Kaito is essentially a faster, more accurate, and deeper ChatGPT built specifically for cryptographic information.

Caldera

• Funding amount: $9 million

• Lead investors: Sequoia Capital, Dragonfly

• Other investors: NEO Foundation, 1kx, Ethereal Ventures

Caldera focuses on building high-performance, customizable L2 blockchains called Caldera Chains. These custom Optimistic Rollups are fast and can handle hundreds of TPS with sub-second confirmation times.

Caldera Chains are highly customizable, feature address whitelisting and sustainable revenue generation, and are directly compatible with standard Ethereum smart contract code.