Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of December 12, 2022. Apogee Raised $149M Series B

I co-hosted a wonderful Hong Kong NFT Summit this past weekend and brought together many influential NFT creators, builders, developers and investors.  I found that most of the builders in Hong Kong are super globally minded.  I am hopeful that Hong Kong will become the Web3 capital of Asia especially China really will not and cannot participate anything crypto related.  

Here are a few interesting founders and projects for this week:

• Yat Siu - Founder and CEO of Animoca Brands has invested in over 380 companies in the Web3 gaming and NFT space since 2018.  My favorite quote by Yat: “All of you who continue to build through this slightly colder winter are the unsung heroes of this industry.” Read more
• Ray Chan - Founder and CEO 9GAG (one of the world's largest user-generated content sites) launches Memeland, a web3-focused venture studio. They just launched this project called Potatoz. Super interesting to watch and learn how they do it.
• Stephen Fung of Departed Ape - Stephen Fung a well known actor and director from Hong Kong launched a new NFT project called Departed Ape based on the movie called Infernal Affairs 無間道🔥. 
• Casey Lau of RiseConf, HKDao and Thunderhouse - Casey is launching Thunderhouse, an accelerator DAO for creatives at the intersection of entertainment and Web3. Launching 2023 from Hong Kong!  He is also bringing the RISE conference back to Hong Kong in 2024.
• Vivien Khoo of Web3Women - Vivien wants to promote female leadership in Web3. She believes that there are a lot of things we can do with Web3; women are going to be able to move the needle more. Read more

This week a total of 15 startups raised $435.9M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $70.2M goes to 4 Enterprise startups
• $15M goes to 1 Crypto/Web3 startup
• $2M goes to 1 HR Tech startup
• $240.8M goes to 5 BioTech startups
• $75M goes to 1 AgTech startup
• $12.3M goes to 1 Food Tech startup
• $15M goes to 1 E-Commerce startup
• $5.6M goes to 1 Construction startup