Faculty Group allocates USD$5mil to the Ocean Protocol Ecosystem Fund
A new era for big data
Faculty Capital, the venture capital division of Faculty Group, has pledged $5 million USD to support the Ocean project ecosystem fund. The Faculty Group and Ocean Protocol collaboration started in 2019 and has focussed on ways to work in synergy to fuel projects and support the development of the Ocean ecosystem.
Luke Lombe, Co-Founder and Partner of Faculty Group, stated:
“We are thrilled to invest in initiatives with Ocean Protocol. Through the Ocean Protocol platform, we will enable data markets supported by prestigious companies who are incorporating Ocean Protocol into their data-driven business models and developing apps specifically for data services.”
Ocean Protocol aims to build a new Data Economy powered by a dynamic group of builders and start-ups. So far, over 150 projects have been funded via OceanDAO and Shipyard programs to encourage and support grassroots innovation. Projects like Algovera, DataUnion, Data Whale, DataX, Felt, Ocean Pearl, Swash, and Transport Genie are some of the many funded initiatives now positioned as catalysts for Ocean’s wide-scale adoption.
Ocean Protocol founder Bruce Pon commented,
“With the rise of DeFi trading strategies using on-chain and off-chain data, ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion taking the world by storm, and ongoing progress in data unions and algorithm builders, the Ocean community has been at the forefront. The next crypto wave will have a strong data narrative, and many of the Ocean ecosystem teams will be ripe for VC funding. We’re proud to strengthen our ties with Faculty Group and have them support Ocean teams to scale.”
Faculty Capital believes that data and data marketplaces (DataFi) will be one of the next evolutions within web3. They are keen to be part of this next wave of innovation and believe that Ocean Protocol is best positioned to provide the infrastructure for data projects. While this has been a challenging year within web3, it is important to look beyond the noise to the real trends and use cases emerging. Transferring big data out of silos into a framework that allows for seamless collaboration, accessibility, and immutability while protecting privacy and control of ownership is a real use case and natural evolution.
As part of their investment thesis, Faculty Group sees many opportunities in a range of market segments in web3, including data. The ability to monetise data for large enterprise firms, control IP, and enable synergies between companies is key to creating success going forward. However, it requires a new mechanism to share data across geographies and markets. Imagine what could be achieved if scientific research data from private and public institutions could be shared through a data marketplace without giving away IP and enabling universities and R&D departments to share large data sets. The possibilities for data applications and services are endless.
Faculty Group are excited to work with projects building in the Ocean ecosystem and believe their due diligence framework and value-add approach to investing will support the growth of Ocean Protocol and the emerging web3 data industry.
About Faculty Group
Faculty Group is a collective of synergistic blockchain-native firms providing a host of services across venture capital, incubation, development, marketing, market making, entertainment, token economics, and financial inclusion to the Web3 innovators shaping the world.
About Ocean Protocol
Ocean Protocol, the web3 platform to unlock data services for AI and business innovation, has been working to spearhead the breakdown of data silos and open access to quality data. To provide organizations and individuals with access to data, Ocean Protocol uses data tokens, which may be exchanged for data. Ocean’s intuitive marketplace technology makes it easier for users to trade and pay for data tokens-based services, enabling them to do so privately and securely.