The crypto arm of financial services company Republic has launched a $60 million seed fund, its first and flagship fund.
Republic is a crowd-equity platform that offers investments in startups, real estate, gaming and crypto. The company is divided into three arms: the private venture-focused Republic Capital; Republic Crypto; and republic.co, which is the retail, crowdfunding part of the business.
Republic Crypto allows companies to raise funds for and finance coin offerings from pre-sale to launch in compliance with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements. Republic also offers the Note security token, secured on the Algorand blockchain, which provides profit-sharing interests in certain Republic portfolio companies.
Earlier this year, Republic raised $35 million in a Series A funding round that was led by a subsidiary of digital asset firm Galaxy Digital, which Republic said pushed its total fundraising to over $70 million.
New portfolio companies coming in through the crypto fund stand to benefit from the broader Republic ecosystem, according to Republic Capital head Boris Revsin. “There are opportunities for them to do everything from a public sale with the retail platform or to continue to fundraise. We are very hands-on, when needed,” Revsin said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Andrew Durgee, the head of Republic Crypto, said the new fund has already deployed around $11 to $12 million to companies that include video game Star Atlas, TikTok competitor Chingari and a “handful” of other companies. Republic originally expected the fund to deploy over two years but now estimates it’s running six months ahead of schedule.
Asked about future plans for Republic Crypto, Durgee broke his response down into the general business and the fund.
“For Republic Crypto, our focus right now is on treasury management. We’re building out kind of an institutional-grade treasury management solution, and there will be a number of funds that are associated with that as that rolls out,” Durgee told CoinDesk.
“I think on the fund side right now, it’s really about just allocating that into projects that we have kind of a little bit of reach with and more understanding through for the other areas of Republic,” he said.
