EMURGO, the official commercial arm of the Cardano blockchain, today announced the launch of a new Cardano ecosystem investment vehicle to invest in early startup and growth-stage companies focused on building socially impactful solutions powered by Cardano.

As wholly-owned subsidiaries of parent company EMURGO, this new Cardano investment vehicle will be two separate entities, EMURGO Africa, and EMURGO Ventures, each with a distinct investment thesis.

1. EMURGO Africa – aims to 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.
2. EMURGO Ventures – will focus on other developed markets to facilitate building 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, developer education tools, and other decentralized apps.

The recent integration of smart contracts into Cardano’s blockchain aims to drive the creation of decentralized services and EMURGO’s new investment vehicle via these two entities will support this.

As subsidiary entities of EMURGO – one of the founding members of Cardano – EMURGO Africa and EMURGO Ventures will leverage EMURGO’s experience in blockchain solutions and network of industry partners to provide strategic capital to its portfolio companies, helping to bolster the Cardano ecosystem.

Through its previous partnership with SOSV, EMURGO has made more than ten direct investments into blockchain startups, including API3 – a data service provider for blockchains that has garnered investment from major funds in the blockchain industry.

“We are more focused than ever on accelerating the development of Cardano’s ecosystem. 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.”

– Ken Kodama, CEO of EMURGO

First, for its initial launch, EMURGO Africa announced two deals to expand the Cardano ecosystem in Africa, utilizing the business networks of its partners.

1. Adanian Labs –  a venture building studio operator in Africa, will partner with EMURGO Africa to support impact-driven startups expanding the Cardano ecosystem across the continent.
2. Adaverse –  a Cardano-focused joint accelerator program in Africa with blockchain industry accelerator Everest Ventures, will also partner with EMURGO Africa.

Second, for its initial launch, EMURGO Ventures announced its first seed investment into Milkomeda – a dcSpark sidechain project bridging Cardano and other layer-1 protocols that will utilize wrapped ADA (wADA) as an asset.

“EMURGO’s investments will help to shape the future of the Cardano ecosystem, a maturing network with a creative and diverse community, growing smart contract capabilities, and partnerships across the globe that provide social and financial services utilizing Cardano’s provably secure technology.”

– Charles Hoskinson, CEO of IOHK