Crypto pre-seed investors: 222 backers, 15 ranked by deals

To find crypto pre-seed investors, filter funding records to the pre-seed stage and rank the funders by how many of those rounds they sit on. NAUT's data shows 344 funder positions on rounds typed Pre-Seed Round or Pre-Seed, held by 222 distinct backers, read from NAUT's own database on 8 November 2026, and the 15 funds with the most of those rounds run from 8 at Big Brain Holdings down to 3 at Dispersion Capital.

Data note. Every count here was read from NAUT's own database on 8 November 2026, read-only. A pre-seed position is 1 pairing of a round typed Pre-Seed Round or Pre-Seed with 1 funder on NAUT's record, which is why 344 positions sit across 222 distinct funder records: a fund that backed 4 such rounds holds 4 of the 344. The ranked table covers the 15 funds with the most pre-seed rounds among live, published, investor-type records, so it is a top 15 by deal count rather than a full count of every fund at 3 rounds or more. Portfolio size, fund type and average round size are stored NAUT fields that cover each fund's whole record, not its pre-seed rounds alone. 1 of the 15 carries a stale stored portfolio field: a16z crypto's reads 28 while its own NAUT page listed 52 investments when that page was read on 8 November 2026, so the table carries 52, the figure a reader sees on the page. 9 of the 15 funds had 1 stored claim each put to a public source on 8 November 2026, 10 claims in total: 8 came back confirmed, 1 was contradicted and 1 could not be found on the page that was read. The other 6 funds in the table were not put through that check, so their rows rest on NAUT's own data. One correction that check produced: NAUT's stored description of MH Ventures names London, the check against the firm's own site did not confirm that, so no location for the firm is stated here. Big Brain Holdings' own domain did not answer 3 fetch attempts on 8 November 2026, so the worked example below uses MH Ventures instead. NAUT Research wrote it.

How to find crypto pre-seed investors, in 4 steps

The filter that does the work is the stage field, because a fund's reputation and its actual first-check record are different things.

• Stage first, sector second. 344 of NAUT's funder positions sit on pre-seed rounds, and a fund either appears on them or it does not.
• Count signed rounds. 222 distinct backers hold those 344 positions, an average of 1.5 each, while the busiest single fund holds 8.
• Read the stored check size before you pitch. Average round size across the 15 ranked funds runs from $4.36M at Cogitent Ventures to $55.45M at a16z crypto, and a fund whose average round is 10 times your target is sitting at a different table.
• Portfolio size tells you how much attention a check buys. Dispersion Capital holds 9 portfolio companies on NAUT's record and Coinbase Ventures holds 180.
• Then open 1 fund and read its actual pre-seed rounds, company by company. That is the step that turns a name into a pitch.

Step 1: filter funding records to the pre-seed stage

Start from the round type and nothing else. Every fund page in crypto says early stage, and plenty of funds that say it have never signed a pre-seed term sheet. The stage field on a funding record is a fact about a signed round, so filtering to Pre-Seed Round or Pre-Seed cuts the universe down to funders who have done the thing you need done.

This is also the fastest way to answer the question founders actually ask, which crypto VCs that invest in pre-seed have done it more than once. On NAUT that filter returns 344 funder positions across 222 distinct funder records. The gap between those 2 numbers is the whole point of the exercise: most backers show up once, and a short group shows up again and again.

Step 2: rank the funders by how many pre-seed rounds they appear on

A ranked count is the cheapest signal of intent available. The 15 funds in the table below hold 67 of the 344 positions between them, which leaves 277 positions spread across the other 207 funder records. A fund on its 8th pre-seed round has a process for them, a partner who owns them, and a sense of what a $2M round should look like.

Ties matter less than the band. 8 funds in the table sit on exactly 4 pre-seed rounds, so treat them as 1 group and sort inside it by fit rather than by rank.

Step 3: match the fund's check size to your round

NAUT stores an average round size per fund, taken across that fund's whole record. It is a blunt number, and it is enough to spot a mismatch. A fund averaging $55.45M a round, as a16z crypto does on NAUT's record, can still write a pre-seed check, and the 5 pre-seed rounds on its record show it has. A fund averaging $4.36M, as Cogitent Ventures does, is going to read a $1.5M round as normal rather than as a rounding error.

Pair that with portfolio size. 180 companies at Coinbase Ventures, 152 at NGC Ventures and 135 at OKX Ventures mean a wide net and a thin slice of partner time each. 9 at Dispersion Capital, 15 at Anagram Crypto and 19 at Symbolic Capital mean the opposite.

Step 4: open 1 fund's pre-seed rounds and read the companies

A fund's own pre-seed rounds tell you which sectors it actually signs and at what size. The worked example below runs that read on MH Ventures, whose 6 pre-seed rounds on NAUT carry an amount each. Every company in those rounds has its own NAUT page with its team on it, so a founder can find the 2 or 3 portfolio companies closest to their own and ask one of them for the introduction.

Which crypto pre-seed investors are most active on NAUT?

These are the 15 funds with the most pre-seed rounds on NAUT's record, ranked by pre-seed round count, read on 8 November 2026. Rounds is the pre-seed count; portfolio size and average round size cover each fund's whole record, not its pre-seed rounds alone.

Fund	Rounds	Portfolio	Avg round
Big Brain Holdings	8	80	$12.48M
MH Ventures	6	60	$8.49M
Cogitent Ventures	5	39	$4.36M
a16z crypto	5	52	$55.45M
OKX Ventures	5	135	$9.62M
Symbolic Capital	4	19	$15.73M
Foresight Ventures	4	49	$15.96M
Digital Currency Group	4	51	$27.08M
Coinbase Ventures	4	180	$29.83M
Mechanism Capital	4	68	$9.79M
Anagram Crypto	4	15	$12.37M
Hack VC	4	32	$24.44M
NGC Ventures	4	152	$8.57M
Amber Group	3	77	$21.55M
Dispersion Capital	3	9	$14.01M

13 of the 15 are typed Venture on NAUT. The 2 that are not are worth a separate note, because the money behind them behaves differently: Coinbase Ventures is typed Exchange and Amber Group is typed Corporate.

The chart is the shape of the whole problem: 1 fund at 8 rounds, 1 at 6, and then a flat band of 12 funds at 5, 4 or 3. Past the top 2 there is no league table left to climb, so the next cut has to come from fit.

Of the 9 funds whose stored description had 1 claim checked against a public source on 8 November 2026, these 5 came back confirmed and are worth knowing for the way they source:

• Big Brain Holdings invests early across gaming, consumer applications, infrastructure, Web3 tools and DeFi, confirmed on 2 third-party investor profiles read on 8 November 2026.
• Coinbase Ventures is the venture arm of the Coinbase exchange and was set up in 2018 as an early-stage fund.
• Hack VC is a web3 venture firm run by 2 managing partners, confirmed by a 2022 announcement of its $200M crypto seed fund.
• NGC Ventures is, on its source, "NGC Ventures, founded in 2017, is a globally recognized venture capital firm headquartered in Singapore."
• Foresight Ventures runs the ForesightX accelerator, which takes projects earlier than its main fund does.

Digital Currency Group's founding year is also confirmed: its source states "DCG was launched in 2015 by Barry Silbert, the former CEO of SecondMarket, Inc." Anyone listed can ask NAUT to remove their page at https://naut.so/legal/data-deletion.

How do crypto pre-seed investors size their checks?

Run the read on 1 fund to see what a pre-seed record looks like up close. MH Ventures is 2nd on the table with 6 pre-seed rounds, 60 portfolio companies and an $8.49M average round across its whole record. All 6 are typed Pre-Seed Round on NAUT, all 6 carry an amount, and they total $22.3M.

Company	Amount	Date on NAUT
Fraction AI	$6M	No date
Bless	$5M	No date
GAIB	$5M	December 2024
Nubit	$3M	No date
Sats Terminal	$1.7M	No date
EthXY	$1.6M	November 2023

Ranked by amount, the 6 rounds run from $6M down to $1.6M, with a median of $4M. 2 of the 6 carry an announce date on NAUT's record, so the other 4 can be placed in the fund's history only by reading each company's own page.

A fund with a $8.49M average round across its record signing 4 pre-seed rounds between $1.6M and $5M is the useful pattern here: the average is set by later rounds in the same portfolio, and the first checks are much smaller. Read both numbers before you decide a fund is too big for your round.

What this tells a founder raising a pre-seed round

Pre-seed crypto funding on NAUT's record supports a short list and a long read, in that order.

• 15 names is a week of work, not a quarter. 67 of the 344 pre-seed positions on NAUT sit with these 15 funds.
• The 8 funds tied at 4 rounds each are interchangeable on activity, so sort them by average round size and portfolio size instead.
• A small portfolio is a real filter. 9, 15 and 19 companies at Dispersion Capital, Anagram Crypto and Symbolic Capital mean a partner can name every one of them.
• Warm beats cold at this stage. Each of the 6 companies in the worked example has a NAUT page listing its team, which is where an introduction request starts.

How to reach the right partner at these funds

Every fund in the table has a NAUT page that lists the people NAUT holds for it, with the channels on file against each name. 2 reads do most of the work. First, the fund page itself: it names the team and the portfolio, so you can see whether the firm has a partner who covers your sector before you write a word. Second, the portfolio company pages, which name founders who have already taken that fund's first check and are the warmest route in.

Keep the order right. A pre-seed fund gets more inbound than any other stage, so a note that names the specific portfolio company you resemble will outrun a note that names the fund's thesis back at it.

Related reading on NAUT: Crypto funding stages: 85 rounds, medians $1.85M to $60M and How to find crypto investors by round size: 28 funds, 4 steps.

Can you pull this data through the NAUT API?

Yes. The fund list behind this article comes from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors?sort=portfolio with a Bearer $NAUT_KEY header, and 1 fund's pre-seed rounds come from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/mh-ventures, whose portfolio rows each carry the company, roundType, amountUsd, announceDate and isLead, so you filter to Pre-Seed Round yourself. Each data call costs 5 credits, plans and quotas are at naut.so/pricing and the endpoints are documented at naut.so/docs/api. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn for the people on these fund pages unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial if you need the channels as well as the names.

Crypto pre-seed investors FAQ

Which VCs invest in pre-seed crypto rounds?

On NAUT's record, read on 8 November 2026, 222 distinct backers hold 344 funder positions on rounds typed Pre-Seed Round or Pre-Seed. The 15 with the most of those rounds are Big Brain Holdings (8), MH Ventures (6), Cogitent Ventures, a16z crypto and OKX Ventures (5 each), Symbolic Capital, Foresight Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Coinbase Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Anagram Crypto, Hack VC and NGC Ventures (4 each), then Amber Group and Dispersion Capital (3 each).

How many crypto pre-seed rounds does NAUT track?

NAUT's data shows 344 funder positions on pre-seed rounds as of 8 November 2026, where 1 position is 1 round paired with 1 funder. The 15 most active funds account for 67 of those positions, which leaves 277 held by the other 207 funder records.

How big is a crypto pre-seed round?

On the 1 fund worked in full here, MH Ventures, the 6 pre-seed rounds on NAUT's record run from $1.6M at EthXY to $6M at Fraction AI, with a median of $4M and a total of $22.3M, read on 8 November 2026. That is 1 fund's record rather than a market average, and the stored average round size across all 15 ranked funds covers every stage they invest at, from $4.36M to $55.45M.

How do I tell a real pre-seed investor from a fund that says early stage?

Count signed rounds at that stage instead of reading the fund's own page. Across the 222 distinct backers on NAUT's pre-seed rounds on 8 November 2026, the 15 most active sit on 3 to 8 rounds each and hold 67 of the 344 positions between them, so activity at this stage concentrates in a short group.

Where can I find crypto pre-seed investors and their contact channels on NAUT?

Each of the 15 funds in this article has a NAUT investor page with its team, its portfolio and the channels NAUT holds for each person, and the same data comes back from GET https://api.naut.so/v1/investors/<fund-slug> for 5 credits a call. Verified Telegram, email and LinkedIn unlock on any paid NAUT plan, so start a 7-day trial to open them.

Sources

• NAUT's own database, read on 8 November 2026, read-only: every funding record typed Pre-Seed Round or Pre-Seed, the funder on each, and each fund's stored portfolio count, fund type and average round size. The 344 positions, the 222 distinct backers, the 15-fund ranking and the 6 rounds for MH Ventures were all computed from those rows at that time.
• Third-party investor profiles for Big Brain Holdings, read on 8 November 2026, which confirmed the sectors it invests in early. The firm's own domain did not answer 3 fetch attempts that day.
• Coinbase Ventures' own ventures page and its company profile, which confirmed it is Coinbase's venture arm, set up in 2018.
• A February 2022 announcement of Hack VC's $200M crypto seed fund, which confirmed the firm is run by 2 managing partners.
• A fund profile for NGC Ventures, which states the firm was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Singapore, with a second profile agreeing.
• Trade coverage of Foresight Ventures, which confirmed the ForesightX accelerator takes early-stage projects, with a second report agreeing on its programme length.
• An encyclopedia entry for Digital Currency Group, which states it was launched in 2015 by its founder.
• a16z crypto's own NAUT investor page, read on 8 November 2026, which listed 52 investments against a stored portfolio field of 28. The table carries 52.
• 2 of the 10 checked claims are not used above: the stored London location for MH Ventures, which the firm's own site did not confirm, and a reported pre-seed round for the same firm, which the source read did not list it on.