Christie's Auction House Launches Venture Fund to Support Web3 and Blockchain 

The auction house Christie's, which specializes in selling luxury goods and artworks, has established an investment fund to help emerging businesses with technology that enables "seamless consumption of art."

The auction house said on Monday that the fund, Christie's Ventures, will provide financial assistance to businesses in Web3, "art-related financial products and solutions," and technologies related to art and luxury goods. According to Christie's, its initial investment will go to LayerZero Labs, a business that is working on tools to enable omnichain decentralized apps, which will make it easier to move assets between blockchains.

“We will focus on products and services, which can solve real business challenges, improve client experiences and expand growth opportunities, both across the art market directly and for interactions with it,” said Devang Thakkar, Christie’s Ventures global head.

Christie's took another step toward assisting projects in the cryptocurrency sector with its entry into blockchain-related investments. The business held an auction in 2021 where more than $69 million for charity for a non-fungible piece of art by Mike Winkelmann, popularly known as Beeple. Since then, it has hosted a number of well-known auctions for NFT artwork and collaborated with the OpenSea online market for on-chain sales.

As the first worldwide auction house to offer specialized online-only auctions in 2011, Christie's has a long history of promoting technological innovation. The company introduced online bidding in 2006. With the help of Christie's multi-site auction live streaming, augmented reality capabilities, support for NFT digital art, and award-winning digital marketing, the company has become more accessible and resilient in recent years.

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