(Bloomberg) — Tennis great Serena Williams has raised $111 million for an early stage venture capital fund with a focus on diversity, the firm said Tuesday.
About three-quarters of the companies backed by Serena Ventures LLC are led by founders from under-represented communities, the firm has said. Founded in 2014, it currently has a portfolio of about 60 startups, according to the New York Times, which reported the news earlier Tuesday.
The firm has leaned into crypto, investing in NFT marketplace Bitski and Bitcoin rewards application Lolli. Last month, Serena Ventures said it had invested in Nestcoin, a Nigeria-based web3 startup aiming to make cryptocurrency more accessible. Also last month Williams’s husband, the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, unveiled a $510 million crypto-focused fund at his own venture capital firm.
Other investments for Serena Ventures include the financial-tech company Esusu and online course platform MasterClass, where Williams has also taught classes.
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