Polygon leads investment in venture studio SuperLayer’s $25 million fund

Web3 venture studio SuperLayer has announced a new $25 million fund led by anchor investor and strategic partner Polygon, an Ethereum scaling solution. 

“Given SuperLayer’s focus on speed and quality, Polygon is a natural partner with industry-leading protocols designed to fix blockchain scalability issues that have slowed innovation,” said Kevin Chou, managing partner of SuperLayer in a release on Thursday. 

SuperLayer launched in October 2021 with a focus on funding and supporting brands and companies implementing tokenized economies using the RLY protocol. 

The studio operates differently from a traditional VC firm by co-founding the projects with entrepreneurs and providing them with seed funding to develop the concept internally. SuperLayer supports them in areas such as community, compliance, go-to-market strategies and partnerships, according to a release. 

SuperLayer’s co-founders Kevin Chou and Mahesh Vellanki are both experienced entrepreneurs themselves having played founding roles in Rally.io, a creator economy protocol on the RLY network, and in blockchain gaming platform Forte. 

The studio is also backed by several big-name investors and builders from a variety of industries including Animoca Brand’s founder Yat Siu, celebrity Paris Hilton and Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon. 

The new funding will be used to expand SuperLayer’s operating model and invest in new projects, according to the release. 

“With this investment and strategic partnership, SuperLayer is enthusiastic about shipping projects to lead the way on Polygon,” Chou said in the release. 

When SuperLayer launched in October, the company said it would begin by deploying $25 million to seed the development of web3 startups and that it would continue to raise funds on a rolling basis, according to a release.