Introducing the 2024 Cryptonite 300 competition—Private Web3 companies worth the bet
Somewhere between the raw startups and the Unicorns are the blockchain, AI, and metaverse companies pioneering Web3 and offering the best equity investment ROI potential in the global Silicon Valley.
Welcome to the kick-off of the 2024 Cryptonite 300 (C300) competition. Eligible companies are generally venture capital-backed enterprises driven by Web3 innovation, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), blockchain and crypto, and the metaverse and virtual reality (VR). C300 companies are chosen from a venture capital perspective, with an eye toward achieving the highest ROI.
Our growing mistrust in all centralized agencies, including Congress, the IRS, many educational institutions, Wall Street, corporate media, and the entertainment industries, drives the Web3 boom. This rebellion has inspired a new generation of blockchain, dApp, AI, and metaverse-focused technologies and companies on a mission to take back our power. Cryptonite is on record as predicting that Web3 represents a $100 trillion opportunity over the next 20 years.
The AlwaysOn top 250 (2003 to 2015), was the predecessor top company competition compiled by some of the same editors and similar methods as the C300. Out of the 1,483 unique Web2 companies that made the AO250 list, 572 companies were successfully acquired, and 193 companies went public, representing a 52 percent exit rate to date. The AO250 return went up this week when Instacart went public for $10 billion, a company we named to the list in 2015, three years after it was founded.
The C300 winners will be honored next Summer at a live show and broadcast of the Silicon Valley ‘24 event this Summer.
In the meantime, our editors will keep Cryptonite members up on the Web3 market and venture trends weekly. Paid members also get access to our list of companies that have made the nomination, and hundreds of other companies we are tracking with supporting data.
Private VC-backed company market update
Despite foreboding macroeconomic indicators that point to a high recession probability in the next 18 months, NASDAQ is up over 17 percent in the past year, and US VC exit activity is slowly picking up with cautious optimism.
Pitchbook’s IPO backlog estimates that 77 US startups are waiting to go public, that could return VC funds up to $800 billion of returns on opening up their pockets again to the 51,000 private companies. An exit rebound could help turn the tide on down rounds and startup closures.
The Web3 market
Cryptonite is betting that Web3 innovation will inevitably overwhelm and replace the cloud-computing paradigm with a smarter, more visual, decentralized, and distributed internet paradigm.
In the last three and a half years, VC investors plowed $340B into over 10,000 private Web3 companies. The AI sector took in $266B (78%) of this cash, $60B (18% went to blockchain/crypto companies, and $12B (4%) to the metaverse and VR sector.
Like the overall VC market, Web3 company VC funding has been harder for entrepreneurs to close. Due to the heightened publicity around the emerging generative AI opportunity and companies such as OpenAI, AI VC funding has dipped, but less dramatically than other sectors.
The free-market reality to date is generally only one or two companies, maybe three, eventually capture well over 90 percent of the market opportunity in each sector, and the rest get acquired or fad away. By the time we honor the Cryptonite 300 next Summer @ Silicon Valley ‘24, the top emerging categories of companies will consolidate, and new sectors with new leading companies will have been added to the list.
In the meantime, we plan to engage in an interactive process with our community to identify new companies and emerging sectors and shuffle, mold, and refine this list to determine the best and brightest Web3 companies for 2024.
Meet the Cryptonite 300 nominated blockchain and crypto companies so far...
This week, we introduce close to 1,000 venture capital-back blockchain companies that have been presented for nomination by top VCs, analysts, and entrepreneurs, of which 105 are currently on the list—for now! The final list is to be unveiled in the Summer of 2024 @ Silicon Valley ‘24.
Introducing the best private companies in AI
Welcome to the kick-off of the 2024 Cryptonite 300 (C300) competition. Eligible companies are generally venture capital-backed enterprises driven by Web3 innovation, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), blockchain and crypto, and the metaverse and virtual reality (VR). C300 companies are chosen from a venture capital perspective, with an eye toward achieving the highest ROI.
Top AI & ML private companies nominated to the Cryptonite 300 competition for 2024
What you get behind the ‘paywall’ as a paid Cryptonite member
Data profiles on 2,500 venture capital-backed AI/ML companies and 1,000 blockchain/crypto companies, over 240 of which have made the C300 nomination list thus far.
250 AI & Blockchain companies on the ‘To Watch’ list we are tracking closely for possible nomination.
Index and data on the Coinbase 257 tradable token list.
Our private company data includes complete descriptions and keywords, last known valuations and multiples, last fundings, active investors, IPO and M&A potential ratings, and CEO/Founder contact information.
All are updated monthly.
The ability to nominate companies to the Cryptonite 300 competition for 2024!