Crunchbase: US Black Web3 founders raised $60M in 2022, up from $16M in 2021; US Web3 startups raised $11.9B in 2022, down 39% from $16.5B in 2021
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
Crunchbase's earlier tally showed Black US founders' share of all US venture capital slipping from a record 1.3% in 2021 to around 1% in 2022 (an estimated $2.254B), so the headline picture was one of retreat. This new cut of the same dataset finds one pocket moving the other way: Black Web3 founders raised $60M in 2022, nearly four times their 2021 figure.
The counter-trend lands in a sector that was itself shrinking — US Web3 startups raised $11.9B in 2022, down 39%, and broader analyses put the global decline steeper still (Web3 funding fell from $29.2B to $21.5B). A rising slice of a falling pie is the tension the numbers force readers to hold.
First-order effects
- Black Web3 founders captured $60M of the $11.9B US Web3 total in 2022 — still roughly half a percent of sector dollars — meaning the gain reflects a very small base growing, not parity approaching.
- Founders and the investors who backed them in 2021's $16M cohort now have a quadrupled funding record to point to at exactly the moment generalist VCs are pulling back from Web3.
Second-order effects
- As Web3 deal flow keeps contracting — Q1 2023 funding fell 81% year over year to $1.7B on fewer than half the prior year's deals — the specialized funds and syndicates that drove the 2022 gain face the same denominator problem as everyone else in the category.
- Diversity-focused capital that concentrated into Web3 during the boom now competes with every other thesis for scarcer dollars, raising the bar for follow-on rounds in the sector.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, funding gains for underrepresented founders prove cyclical rather than structural: they arrive with hot sectors and evaporate with them, as later tallies of Black-founded startup funding collapsing through 2023 suggest.
- Crunchbase's granular cuts — by race, by sector, by quarter — are becoming the standard evidence base for arguing about who venture capital actually reaches, giving data providers outsized influence in that debate.
The trend: Venture funding for underrepresented founders is tracking sector cycles rather than decoupling from them, with each boom concentrating whatever diversity gains occur inside whichever category is hottest.