# NEAR Foundation

> NEAR Foundation is a VC fund backing Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. See 53 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Total investments: 53
- Last investment: Aug 2025
- Lead investor: 34%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- Website: https://near.foundation/

NEAR Foundation is a non-profit foundation that is responsible for contracting protocol maintainers, funding ecosystem development, and shepherding core governance.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for NEAR Foundation. Shizune tracks 5 team members at NEAR Foundation. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/near-foundation?utm_source=investor_profile

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Blockchain | 24 | 45% |
| Cryptocurrency | 10 | 19% |
| Web3 | 8 | 15% |
| Software | 5 | 9% |
| Financial Services | 5 | 9% |

71 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Grant | 20 | 38% |
| Seed | 15 | 28% |
| Pre-Seed | 10 | 19% |
| Series A | 2 | 4% |
| Initial Coin Offering | 2 | 4% |

8 stages tracked in total.

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 16 | 30% |
| United Kingdom | 4 | 8% |
| Nigeria | 2 | 4% |
| Singapore | 2 | 4% |
| Switzerland | 2 | 4% |

12 countries tracked in total.

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Christopher Donovan | General Counsel | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/christopher-donovan-452b |
| Jordan Gray | Integration & Transformation | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jordan-gray-2 |
| Kem Boggs | Chief People Officer | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/kem-boggs |
| Bill Earner | Chief Operating Officer | 4 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/bill-earner |
| Laura Cunningham | Head of Product | 4 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/laura-cunningham-3efb |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Almanak | Almanak is a decentralized finance (DeFi) smart agent platform that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to automate, optimize, and intelligently manage a wide range of DeFi investment strategies. It enables users to create and deploy automated DeFi trading and risk-management strategies through coordinated AI agents. It provides anenvironment where AI handles strategy coding, backtesting across thousands of Monte Carlo simulations, optimization, risk monitoring, deployment via non-custodial Safe-based multisig accounts, and real-time performance monitoring with alerting capabilities. The platform supports seamless interaction with multiple blockchains and protocols via an LLM-powered interface.Almanak targets active DeFi participants, developers building financial applications, investment professionals, and users seeking automated portfolio insights. It emphasizes enhanced automation, continuous strategy execution, and adaptive automation driven by emerging AI techniques to respond to evolving market conditions. | $8.5M | Seed | Aug 17, 2025 |  |
| PublicAI | PublicAI is a Web3 distributed AI training network that helps people to earn rewards by contributing data work. | $8M | Series A | Jun 17, 2025 |  |
| Abound | Abound is super app where money, commerce and content transcend geographical boundaries. | $14M | Seed | Mar 27, 2025 |  |
| Pond | Pond is a decentralized AI startup that focuses on creating a comprehensive ecosystem for training Web3 AI models. Pond's approach is quite exciting because it merges two powerful, innovative technologies: AI and Web3. | $7.5M | Seed | Nov 07, 2024 |  |
| Predicate | Predicate network simplifies transaction prerequisites. | $7M | Seed | Oct 15, 2024 |  |
| OpenGradient | OpenGradient is a leading decentralized AI platform for open-source model hosting, secure inference, agentic reasoning, and application deployment. By developing tooling and a feature-rich platform that makes developing AI workflows both secure and seamless, OpenGradient empowers developers with the ability to build in its ecosystem of intelligentand optimized AI-empowered applications. With native model hosting, permissionless composability, and secure inference execution, OpenGradient also aims to accelerate open-source AI by democratizing model ownership, improving verifiability guarantees, and promoting censorship-resistant model access.Our heterogeneous AI compute architecture (HACA) and our proprietary library NeuroML scale secure AI workflows with features like inference, agentic reasoning, statistical analysis, and more. OpenGradient also accelerates open-source innovation with a web portal and SDK for Web2 developers to leverage our AI stack without navigating blockchain complexities, while enjoying the security and composability benefits of decentralized infrastructure. | $9.5M | Seed | Oct 09, 2024 |  |
| Open Forest Protocol | Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is a scalable digital platform for verifying and issuing forest carbon credits — bringing transparency, inclusivity, and affordability to a market long defined by exclusivity, high costs, and opacity. OFP is creating the foundation for more inclusive, scalable, and data-backed financing mechanisms for nature-based climatesolutions. |  | Pre-Seed | Sep 10, 2024 |  |
| MoreMarkets | Nuffle Labs develops NEAR Data Availability (DA) and the NEAR Fast Finality Layer (NFFL). | $7M | Grant | Jun 13, 2024 |  |
| Analog | Analog is the world’s first layer-0, Omni-chain platform that leverages proof-of-time (PoT) to validate time data (events). With PoT, all nodes have a fair chance of being selected to validate time data and participate in the consensus process on the Timechain (an ordered sequence of immutable verified time data). This contrasts with proof-of-work(PoW)-powered networks that require computationally-intensive resources to mine blocks or proof-of-stake (PoS)-enabled networks where nodes must stake enough coins. The Analog network is the first realistic attempt in helping the world to move from a “timeless mess” to a “time-driven” environment via PoT consensus. Besides solving the problem of verifiability of time data, the Analog network also prioritizes interoperability. It establishes a radically decentralized, secure, and trustless layer-0 where multiple networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum can anchor their transactions. Most importantly, the Analog Timegraph leverages zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to create a validated pipeline of time data that businesses can privately leverage to power the next generation of time-dependent applications. Unlike other Blockchain application programming interface (API) models that involve the use of third-party oracles, Analog’s Timegraph API allows data providers to become their own oracles on the Timechain. This creates an entirely new marketplace of time data that is set to power the next generation of decentralized applications (DApps). | $16M | Seed | Feb 12, 2024 |  |
| Virtual Labs | VDEX is the First Chain Abstracted PerpDEX with Sub-Millisecond Finality and Sustainable Bitcoin Yield. VDEX is powered by Virtual Rollups. | $1.2M | Pre-Seed | Nov 30, 2023 |  |

10 of 53 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Coinbase Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/coinbase-ventures) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Outlier Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/outlier-ventures-ltd-llp) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Solana Foundation](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/solana-foundation) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Tribe Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/tribe-capital) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Cogitent Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cogitent-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [MetaWeb Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/metaweb-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together

## Similar investors

### Similar industry
- [Coinbase Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/coinbase-ventures) — VC Fund
- [Animoca Brands](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/animoca-brands-corporation) — VC Fund
- [Digital Currency Group](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/digital-currency-group) — VC Fund

### Similar stage
- [Scottish Enterprise](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/scottish-enterprise) — VC Fund
- [Foundation for Innovation and Technology (FIT)](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/foundation-pour-l-innovation-technologique) — VC Fund
- [Business Finland](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/tekes) — VC Fund

### Similar country
- [IDG Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/idg-capital-partners) — VC Fund
- [Qiming Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/qiming-venture-partners) — VC Fund
- [HSG](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sequoia-capital-china) — VC Fund

## Featured in investor lists
- [Web3 Investors in China](https://shizune.co/investors/web3-investors-china)

## FAQ

### What does NEAR Foundation invest in?

NEAR Foundation invests primarily in Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Web3 startups, most often at Grant and Seed stage. Most of the 53 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### How do I contact NEAR Foundation?

Public channels for NEAR Foundation include the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### Who are the partners at NEAR Foundation?

The team at NEAR Foundation includes Christopher Donovan (General Counsel), Jordan Gray (Integration & Transformation) and Kem Boggs (Chief People Officer). The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

# About Shizune
Shizune.co is an investor database. Core features:
- 48,091 startup investors (angels, VCs, accelerators, and others)
- Email, phone, LinkedIn (for intros), socials, and other contact data
- Updated daily from public funding news
- CSV and Excel export

The User can access the full database FOR FREE after signing up: shizune.co