Toronto-headquartered venture capital firm Contango Digital Assets has successfully completed the initial \(5 million of its intended \)10 million Blockchain x AI Seed Fund.

The fund has already made investments in several Canadian companies using a portion of the $1.5 million that has been deployed.

Backed by Dean Skurka, the CEO of WonderFi, one of Canada’s largest crypto companies, Contango also boasts investors such as Richard Ma, the CEO of Quantstamp, a blockchain security firm, and Mario Casiraghi, the CFO of SingularityNET, a decentralized AI algorithm marketplace.

Founded in 2020, the company is spearheaded by managing partners Mike Grantis, who previously established the digital marketing agency Ad Turbine, and Joshua Field, a former wealth director at Coinsquare.

Contango’s primary objective is to expedite the worldwide acceptance of decentralized systems, with a specific emphasis on “decentralized artificial intelligence” (DAI). DAI refers to an AI system that utilizes blockchain technology for data distribution, processing, and storage across a network of nodes, as defined by Techopedia.

As implied by its name, the Blockchain x AI Seed Fund concentrates on investing in early-stage North American companies operating at the convergence of blockchain and artificial intelligence. Contango has allocated a portion of the fund towards projects within the Bittensor ecosystem, a DAI initiative that its subsidiary, General TAO Ventures, is actively developing. This strategy enables Contango to engage directly with its portfolio companies through its subsidiary.

In a related development, blockchain startup Hivello secured $3.3 million CAD in pre-seed funding.

“We aimed to raise [$5 million] and quickly exceeded our target,” stated Field. “This underscores the successful track record of our investments since 2021 and the growing interest in both crypto and artificial intelligence.”

Field highlighted, “This intersection has been a focal point where we have sourced remarkable deal flow and achieved significant returns, positioning Contango and our Limited Partners (LPs) competitively.”

Field informed BetaKit that the fund will adhere to a standard General Partner (GP)/Limited Partner (LP) structure and plans to back 40 to 50 projects in a co-lead capacity over the next five to seven years. The fund’s investment size ranges from \(150,000 to \)250,000, reserving approximately one-fifth of its capital for follow-on investments.

Although the fund does not have a specific allocation for Canadian companies, it has already invested in several Canadian firms with the \(1.5 million that has been deployed. One notable investment includes Toronto-based Hivello’s \)3.3 million CAD pre-seed round earlier this year, a startup dedicated to simplifying the development of Web3 applications.

Image courtesy of Contango.