Dao5 Raises $222M Fund to Invest in Projects for Government, Institutional Blockchain Adoption

Crypto investment firm dao5 raised a $222 million fund to invest in blockchain projects targeting institutional and government adoption. The fund brings the firm’s total assets under management to $550 million.

Founded in 2022 by Tekin Salimi, a former partner at Polychain Capital, dao5 made early bets on projects including Story Protocol, Bittensor, Berachain and EigenLayer.

The firm’s first fund, launched during the final days of the last bull market three years ago, was fully deployed and has already returned “the vast majority of commitments to its limited partners,” according to a press release shared with CoinDesk.

“Crypto is entering its adolescence phase. The industry’s dependency on pure speculation as the driver of growth is no longer as effective as it once was,” Salimi said.

Future success will be a product of “the real integration of blockchain technology into global financial, governmental, and private sector systems,” he said.

The new fund’s focus is on-chain public infrastructure, novel stablecoin systems and “state-sovereign artificial intelligence.”

In tandem with the fundraise, the firm plans for its dao5 fund to convert into a decentralized autonomous organization later this year. To support its expansion, the firm added George Lambeth, who previously backed projects like Avalanche and Celestia, as General Partner.