- SkyBridge Capital is set to roll out a Web3 venture-capital fund.
- The firm plans to market the fund at its annual Salt conference on September 12.
- Earlier this week, SkyBridge’s Legion Strategies fund suspended client redemptions.
Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital is set to roll out a fund investing in Web3 and cryptocurrency startups in September, according to people familiar with the firm’s plans.
The plans come as Scaramucci, who is famous for his 11-day stint as President Donald Trump’s communications director, is facing investor withdrawals from some of his funds after losses due to sharp declines in stocks and cryptocurrencies.
SkyBridge’s new traditional venture/growth equity style fund will invest in privately held Web3 fintechs and in growth and late-stage crypto companies, sources told Insider. The fund, which the firm is planning to announce at its annual Salt conference on September 12, will be open to accredited investors.
Sources familiar with Scaramucci’s plans said SkyBridge wanted to be at the forefront of decentralized finance and sees opportunities in companies that are trading at attractive discounts on the secondary market, as well as companies that are continuing to raise primary rounds.
SkyBridge has pivoted heavily into crypto from its traditional hedge fund of funds business. Since January 2021, SkyBridge-managed funds have invested approximately $425 million in 12 private companies, including $275 million in nine crypto companies such as FTX, a source familiar said.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported SkyBridge’s $250 million Legion Strategies fund suspended client redemptions on the grounds that 20% of its holdings were in privately held companies. Legion also had exposure to digital assets through other funds managed by SkyBridge, including vehicles focused on bitcoin, ethereum, and algorand, according to regulatory filings. The fund is down 30% year to date, Scaramucci told CNBC Tuesday.
One person familiar with Scaramucci’s plans told Insider that SkyBridge expected some of these private bids to go public this year but that the downturn in the market had slowed initial public offerings. Once the portfolio begins to have more liquidity, the firm will let investors out, this person added.
SkyBridge’s flagship fund, the Multi-Adviser Hedge Fund Portfolios, is also experiencing redemptions. Scaramucci told The New York Times’ DealBook that investors were looking to withdraw as much as $890 million from the fund, which had $2 billion at the end of March. The fund is up roughly 6% for the month of July, according to a person familiar with the fund’s performance.
Despite the redemptions, Scaramucci is still bullish on crypto.
“I am not smart enough to time the market,” he told DealBook. “But we’ve done a tremendous amount of research and we think anyone who has will see that blockchain technology is good and is the future.”
