Solana’s Colosseum has completed its initial $60 million funding round to fund pre-seed investments for its accelerator program.
The capital will be allocated to pre-seed investments in teams accepted into Colosseum’s Accelerator program, intended to attract additional developers and entrepreneurs to the Solana ecosystem.
“We established Colosseum to facilitate the competition and realization of founders’ product visions without the geographic constraints of conventional accelerator models.” Clay Robbins, co-founder of Colosseum, stated, “It is clear that there is a market demand for innovative, specialized venture products in the crypto space.”
Colosseum is an autonomous organization that prioritizes the expansion of the Solana ecosystem through various initiatives, such as its incubation program and virtual hackathons.
All projects chosen for this program are granted access to Solana’s network of mentors, venture funds, and a $250,000 pre-seed investment.
Colosseum has been overseeing Solana’s hackathons since January 2024, when the Solana Foundation transferred certain initiatives to the organization.
Since 2020, the hackathons have attracted over 60,000 participants through eight programs organized by the foundation. Hackathon participants have reportedly raised over $600 million in venture funding and launched 4,000 products.
Colosseum successfully hosted its inaugural hackathon for the Solana Foundation earlier this year, which drew 8,000 builders from 95 countries. During a five-week competition, the program received more than 1,000 product submissions.
Nate Levine, co-founder of Colosseum, expressed his dedication to ensuring that hackathon participants and accelerator founders have access to the necessary resources to succeed.
A spokesperson for Solana told Cointelegraph that the preponderance of venture-backed startups in the Solana ecosystem were born from the hackathons. Startups have raised over $650 million in venture capital, with valuations in the billions.
The Solana ecosystem had over 2,500 monthly active developers on open-source repositories as of January 2024.