In September 2022, Kevin O’Leary announced that he was launching a crypto fund in UAE called Cypher with a lead investor from the UAE, yet he did not mention who. Today it has become public knowledge that the lead investor is no other than UAE Cypher Capital.

Vineet Budki, Managing Partner and CEO of UAE’s Cypher Capital, announced that the fund Kevin O’leary had mentioned at Converge22 was in partnership with Cypher Capital.

In his LinkedIn post he states, “We look forward to an amazing relationship with Kevin O’Leary and Paul Palandijian, CEO of O’Leary Ventures and as always the super human effort of Bijan Alizadeh Founder of Cypher Capital and Munaf Ali, Founder and CEO of Phoenix Group.”

He adds in his post, “The new bigger Cypher Capital fund is coming and we are happy to support the Web3 and Blockchain ecosystem globally and in MENA.”

It seems that the announcement was also made by Alizadeh during Gitex 2022 at TDeFi stage. 

Kevin O’ Leary, nicknamed “Mr. Wonderful”, a Canadian businessman, entrepreneur, and television personality and an advocate of crypto stated at Converge 22, “I recently became a citizen of the United Arab Emirates to work freely in a region that has attracted investment by some of crypto’s heaviest hitters, including exchanges FTX, Binance and Crypto.com. The new all-Web3 fund’s lead investor comes from the United Arab Emirates.  There’s a tremendous amount of capital and interest there to invest in this space.”

UAE Cypher Capital which launched in March 2022 is a private venture capital firm rooted in the UAE and MENA region. At the time of its launch it noted that it had a USD100 million seed fund that would focus on investments in blockchain, crypto and other digital asset projects with genuine value propositions.

At the time Bijan Alizadeh, Founder and General Partner at Cypher Capital stated, “We are very proud and honored to be launching our first and the biggest crypto, digital asset and blockchain private seed fund from the UAE and the Middle East Region.  This fund reflects our vision to be the leading global partner for projects in the blockchain, crypto and the digital asset community. We will collaborate closely with our portfolio projects, offering them access to our network and equipping them with our knowledge, as well as investing alongside other venture capital partners into innovative blockchain, crypto and digital asset projects.”

With this latest partnership it seems that Alizadeh has kept his promise and is working alongside other venture capital partners to help grow the blockchain and digital asset ecosystem.

Cypher Capital had already invested USD1.5 million into UAE’s Crypto Oasis Sentio, showcasing its belief that cooperating with other private venture capital funds builds the blockchain ecosystem. “