EMURGO Launches New $100 Million Cardano Ecosystem Investment Vehicle for African Startups

EMURGO, the Cardano Blockchain’s official commercial arm, has announced the launch of its new $100m Cardano investment to fund early-stage and growth-stage startups in Africa focusing on creating socially meaningful solutions using Cardano.

In a statement realeased by the parent company EMURGO Ptd. Ltd., this new Cardano investment vehicle will be composed of two separate entities, EMURGO Africa, and EMURGO Ventures, each with a distinct investment thesis.

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.

EMURGO Ventures will focus on other developed markets to facilitate the building of solutions and services on Cardano with a set capital allocation for seed investments into a variety of Cardano-focused startups and middleware solutions companies, including those building decentralized financial services (DeFi), non-fungible token (NFT) projects, blockchain developer education tools, and other decentralized applications.

EMURGO’s CEO Ken Kodama speaking said: “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. EMURGO is dedicated to meeting this demand by providing the capital and strategic resources necessary for our portfolio companies to scale rapidly and bring new solutions to Cardano,”.

EMURGO Africa and EMURGO Ventures, as subsidiaries of EMURGO will leverage EMURGO’s vast experience in Blockchain solutions deployment and global network of industry partners to give strategic funding to its portfolio firms.

As mentioned by EMURGO Africa Adanian Labs, an African venture capital firm, will collaborate with EMURGO Africa to promote impact-driven entrepreneurs as the Cardano ecosystem expands throughout the continent.

EMURGO Africa will also collaborate with Adaverse, a Cardano-focused joint accelerator program in Africa with Everest Ventures, a major blockchain industry accelerator.

African startups and businesses interested in seed funding and partnerships may apply here