Which blockchain projects has Sequoia Capital invested in?

With the rapid development of blockchain, many investors have joined some blockchain startups. Sequoia Capital can be said to be one of the most well-known venture capital institutions in the world. Sequoia Capital has invested in many well-known companies, such as Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Zoom, etc. Now many of the invested companies have become giants. Today, let's take a look at the main blockchain companies invested by Sequoia Capital.

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About Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, that focuses primarily on the technology industry. Sequoia Capital is a top venture capital fund firm in 2019.

Sequoia manages investment funds, including funds specifically targeting India and Southeast Asia, Israel, and China, as well as the U.S. Sequoia Capital's early investments that have achieved good returns in the past include Apple, Cisco, Google, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Zoom, PayPal, Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr.

Sequoia Capital was founded by Don Valentine in 1972, when the venture capital industry in California was just beginning to develop. Sequoia established its first venture capital fund in 1974 and became an early investor in Atari the following year. In 1978, Sequoia became one of the first investors in Apple. Partners Doug Leone and Michael Moritz became executives of the firm in 1996. In 1999, Sequoia established a dedicated investment fund for Israeli startups. In 2005, Sequoia Capital China was established, followed by Sequoia Capital India.

Sequoia Capital is a limited liability company. Sequoia's limited partners are primarily university endowments, charitable foundations, and other large institutions. Sequoia Capital focuses on seed, early, and growth stage investments in private technology companies, including clean technology, consumer internet, Crypto, financial services, healthcare, mobile, and robotics. Sequoia Capital is recognized for its strong track record of early-stage investments. Sequoia Capital also distinguishes itself from other top venture capital firms by diversifying its investments rather than just focusing on early-stage venture capital in the United States.

In 2019, Hurun Research Institute identified Sequoia as the world's largest unicorn investor, noting that Sequoia invested in one-fifth of private companies valued at $1 billion or more. In July 2021, Sequoia published an article on entrepreneurial opportunities in Latin America, indicating that it would increase its focus there.

Some of Sequoia Capital’s recent investments:

• 2019: Bounce, BharatPe, Stanza Living

• 2020: TikTok, Bytedance, Snowflake, Unity, Sumo Logic

• 2021: Zapier, Robinhood, Stripe, Thumbtack, InstaCart, BitClout, Novotech

  
  

On February 17, 2022, Sequoia Capital plans to invest $500 million to enter the Crypto market. As part of the restructuring plan, Sequoia Capital will bet on digital assets, mainly investing in Crypto traded on third-party exchanges. This crypto fund will mainly invest in crypto projects, including those that have been listed on crypto exchanges and those that have not yet been listed. The investment scale of a single project ranges from $100,000 to $50 million. Sequoia also plans to participate in crypto finance.

On March 7, 2022, Sequoia Capital participated in a $32 million financing round for Espresso Systems, a Web 3 application expansion and privacy system. This round of financing was led by Greylock Partners and Electric Capital, with participation from Blockchain Capital, Slow Ventures, and others.

On March 9, 2022, EthSign, a Web 3 infrastructure company and electronic agreement signing platform, completed a $12 million seed round of financing. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital India and Mirana Ventures, with participation from Amber Group, Circle Ventures, NGC Ventures, HashKey Group and Matrixport.

Some of the blockchain companies invested by Sequoia Capital

Source: Sequoia Capital official website

Sequoia Capital “All In” Blockchain

On December 8, 2021, Sequoia Capital changed its Twitter profile from helping adventurous people create great companies to From ideas to implementation, we (Sequoia Capital) help adventurous people build great DAOs.

DAO (Decentralized autonomous organization) is a digital and decentralized autonomous organization. Generally, DAO is an investor-oriented venture capital fund. One of the main features of Crypto is decentralization. This means that Crypto and DAO are not controlled by centralized institutions, but are distributed among various computers, networks, and nodes. Inspired by the decentralization of Crypto, a group of developers came up with the idea of ​​establishing DAO in January 2016.

From the changes in the introduction and a series of recent investment actions, it can be seen that Sequoia regards investing in DAO and the blockchain entrepreneurs behind DAO as the future. In fact, Sequoia Capital began investing in blockchain startups in 2016. However, in 2021, a series of outstanding performances by other top venture capital institutions (such as A16z and Paradigm) and the emergence of more professional blockchain investment institutions have given Sequoia Capital a sense of urgency.

The large investments of its competitors also made Sequoia Capital realize that it needed to make changes and increase its investment proportion in blockchain. In June 2021, its old rival A16z raised more than $2.2 billion in Crypto Fund III, becoming the world's largest crypto venture capital institution with capital management scale. In November 2021, well-known venture capital firm Paradigm announced the establishment of a venture fund with a total value of $2.5 billion. Paradigm was founded by former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam, founder of the US-listed Crypto exchange Coinbase.

On December 3, 2021, Sequoia Capital tweeted that it would auction the 2005 YouTube investment memo as an NFT, and the NFT was sold for more than $800,000. In the article "Why We Auctioned the 2005 YouTube Investment Memo as an NFT" written by Sequoia Capital when selling the memo NFT, it stated that Sequoia Capital has recognized the importance of blockchain technology and applications. The impact of blockchain goes far beyond the valuation and trading of currencies and digital commodities. Decentralized protocols and new entities like DAOs may reshape everything, from how products are built to how people communicate and create communities.

Investing in blockchain security company CertiK

On December 2, 2021, CertiK completed a single round of financing in the blockchain security field led by Sequoia Capital, with a valuation of nearly US$1 billion. Sequoia Capital led the investment of US$80 million in it (Round B2 financing), followed by investors such as Tiger Global, Coatue Management and Hillhouse Capital (the venture capital arm of Hillhouse Capital).

CertiK is a global blockchain security company headquartered in New York and a leader in smart contract and blockchain security.

With the rapid development of blockchain, the market demand for blockchain security has increased significantly in the past few years. It is mainly to prevent blockchain from being attacked by hackers and Crypto theft. According to ChainAnalysis data, about $2.2 billion in funds were stolen through DeFi protocols in 2021. According to ChainAnalysis estimates, as of 2022, illegal wallet addresses currently hold at least $10 billion worth of Crypto, most of which involve Crypto theft, darknet markets, and scams.

CertiK has experienced incredible growth over the past year, with revenue and headcount increasing 20x and 4x respectively. To date, CertiK has provided security products and services to over 1,800 clients, detected over 31,000 vulnerabilities in blockchain code, and protected over $310 billion worth of digital assets.

Sequoia Capital said that blockchain security is an indispensable part of the entire business value chain. Investing in CertiK is an important addition to Sequoia Capital's global blockchain investment portfolio. Sequoia Capital believes that CertiK can generate synergies with other invested companies. Sequoia Capital's goal is to provide CertiK with resources to jointly develop the blockchain security market.

Invest in the recently popular FTX exchange

FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in the Bahamas. As of July 2021, the exchange has an average daily trading volume of $10 billion and over 1 million users. FTX is led by 29-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, the world's richest Crypto billionaire (net worth $26.5 billion).

FTX processes 10% of the $3.4 trillion in derivatives (mostly futures and options) traded by crypto investors each month. FTX takes an average of 0.02% of each transaction, bringing in about $750 million in revenue and $350 million in profit each month. In addition, FTX received $1.5 billion in private funding in 2021, and its valuation soared from $1.2 billion to $25 billion. FTX hopes to become a household name, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and signing many celebrity brand ambassadors including Tom Brady, David Ortiz, well-known basketball stars Stephen Curry and Kevin O'Leary.

On July 21, 2021, FTX announced that it had completed a $900 million Series B financing round, with a company valuation of $18 billion. The Series B financing round attracted participation from many well-known figures and institutions in the investment community, including Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group, hedge fund tycoon Paul Tudor Jones II, and Sequoia Capital.

Investing in blockchain digital storage and data retrieval systems

Filecoin (⨎) is an open source, public Crypto and digital payment system that aims to be a blockchain-based collaborative digital storage and data retrieval method. Filecoin is made by Protocol Labs and built on top of the Interplanetary File System, allowing users to rent unused hard drive space. The blockchain mechanism is used to register transactions. According to the founder of Filecoin, Filecoin is a decentralized storage system designed to store humanity's most important information. Filecoin is an open protocol supported by a blockchain that records the commitments made by network participants and uses the blockchain's native currency FIL for transactions. The blockchain is based on proof of replication and proof of space and time.

In contrast to centralized storage methods, Filecoin aims to store data in a decentralized manner, which is resistant to the problems that arise in centralized storage. Due to the decentralized nature of Filecoin, it protects the integrity of the data location, making it easy to retrieve and difficult to censor. It also allows people on their network to become custodians of the data they store. In addition, Filecoin also rewards network nodes that mine and store data on its blockchain network.

In August 2017, Sequoia Capital participated in the financing of Filecoin. At that time, Filecoin completed a financing of US$257 million within one hour. Other institutions participating in the fundraising included eight venture capital institutions including Stanford University.

Invest in blockchain game Faraway

On November 4, 2021, Sequoia Capital, FTX, and Lightspeed led a $21 million financing for the blockchain game Faraway. Faraway's game Mini Royale is the first multiplayer game based on Solana's FTX Pay and NFT.

Faraway Game

Faraway said other participants in this round of financing include A16z, Pantera Capital, Jump Capital and Solana. Faraway raised $8 million in seed round financing in early 2021, also led by Lightspeed.

Faraway said the investment will be used to integrate the Solana blockchain into Faraway’s most popular game, Mini Royale, a first-person shooter similar to Counter-Strike.

Alex Paley, CEO of Faraway, said that blockchain technology will unlock the potential of truly player-driven open economies and will usher in the next wave of games and virtual worlds. Faraway’s goal for current and future games is to create extremely fun and social games with open economies, where players truly own their in-game assets and truly understand how the game evolves over time.