Framework Ventures

Framework Ventures is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm founded in 2019 by Vance Spencer and Michael Anderson. The firm pioneered institutional investment in decentralized finance, making early bets on Chainlink, Aave, Synthetix, and The Graph before DeFi existed as a recognized category. Spencer previously worked at Snapchat and co-founded Hashletes - an officially licensed NFL digital collectibles startup sold in 2019 - while Anderson held product management roles at Dropbox and Snapchat. Their entrepreneurial background as crypto builders shaped the firm's high-conviction, founder-first approach. Spencer and Anderson became among the largest non-team, non-exchange holders of Chainlink and Synthetix tokens, engaging in protocol governance rather than taking passive positions. This hands-on orientation distinguished Framework from traditional venture firms and defined its identity as a genuine crypto-native investor. The early DeFi portfolio generated exceptional outcomes: across its listed investments, Framework has recorded a reported 15.13x return on investment with 122 total investments and 71 rounds led. The firm scaled through successive funds - an initial fund in 2019, a 100 million USD second fund in 2021, a 400 million USD third fund announced in April 2022 targeting crypto gaming, DeFi, infrastructure, and layer-one networks, and a 400 million USD fourth fund announced in June 2026 with a broadened mandate covering artificial intelligence, robotics, and energy. By the time of the fourth fund announcement, roughly half its capital had already been deployed. Framework held 1.28 billion USD in assets under management as of December 2025, with a limited partner base that includes Ivy League endowments, sovereign wealth funds, funds of funds, and nonprofits. The investment approach centers on leading early-stage rounds with check sizes from 250,000 to 40 million USD. The firm describes its selection process as discerning and emphasizes alignment with founders across multiple market cycles. Active portfolio positions include Jito Labs (Solana MEV infrastructure and liquid staking), Hyperliquid (high-performance on-chain derivatives exchange), Sky formerly MakerDAO (stablecoin protocol and DeFi governance), Maple Finance (institutional on-chain credit markets), Celestia (modular blockchain data availability layer), and Berachain (EVM-compatible proof-of-liquidity blockchain), alongside foundational DeFi holdings in Chainlink, Aave, and Synthetix. Recent investments signal the expanded frontier technology mandate: Plasma raised 24 million USD in February 2025 to build a stablecoin protocol with its own blockchain; Obex raised 37 million USD in November 2025 for real-world income and credit infrastructure; Daylight Energy raised 75 million USD in October 2025 for energy finance infrastructure. The firm also backed Better.com and Mecka AI, a robotics data startup. General Partner Rajiv Patel-O'Connor joined as the team expanded to support the wider scope. Spencer and Anderson have described the expansion as following where strong founders within their network were already building - noting that exceptional builders were increasingly working on AI, robotics, and energy problems, making these natural extensions of the same pattern-recognition that drove their early DeFi bets. Framework Ventures is a Registered Investment Adviser, based in San Francisco, and has received coverage from Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, and CoinDesk as it has evolved from an early DeFi specialist into a multi-sector technology investor active across multiple market cycles.