Alibaba's Ant Group Ditches A&T Capital As Crypto Venture Funds Continue To Dwindle

Ant Group, a Jack Ma-founded affiliate company of Chinese tech giant Alibaba BABA, is withdrawing its investment from crypto-focused A&T Capital.

A&T Capital was formed in 2021 with the majority of backing, roughly $100 million, from Ant Group.

The company’s focus was to invest in budding crypto startups, like it did in digital-asset lender Matrixport and Ethereum software developer ConsenSys.

The news comes at a time when the crypto community is gearing up for the much-anticipated Benzinga's Future of Digital Assets conference on Nov. 14, where market trends and predictions will be a hot topic of discussion.

With the latest resignation of founding partner, Yu Jun, who also served as Ant Group executive, A&T Capital’s scenario reflects uncertainty regarding the company’s future. Also, there is no clarity if it will continue independent operations or seek new investment partners.

Yu Jun’s exit was led by an investigation into his behavior at the workplace. Several women accused him of sexual harassment, including his colleagues at A&T Capital.

The step also comes amid broader trends of a downtrend in crypto venture funding in second quarter due to rising interest in artificial intelligence (AI) in fintech. RootData indicated that venture capital funding in the crypto sector dropped to an all-time low of $520.1 million across 84 funding rounds in June which is 23.1% lower than May levels. This is the lowest level since 2020 amid a meltdown in the virtual asset space due to the rising interest in AI technology.

Ant Group Shifts Focus: Ant Group recently introduced an AI model — “Smart Wealth” (Zhixiaobao) and a tool for financial professionals called Zhixiaozhu — to provide consumers with financial advice and investment analysis. While this marks Ant Group’s entry into China’s AI market, the models are under testing based on China’s regulatory clearance procedures.

Zhixiaobao will have the ability to match the market analysis and reasoning expertise of an average financial professional, while Zhixiaozhu focuses on investment analysis and information extraction among other business-related tasks.

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Image: Shutterstock, Ant Group