Wintermute’s Brutal Filter: 600 Companies Reviewed, Only 4% Funded Last Year

Wintermute just laid bare the venture capital gauntlet.

The crypto market maker reviewed a staggering 600 companies in the last year. The final tally? A mere 4% made the cut for funding. That's twenty-four projects in a sea of pitches.

The Selection Sieve

Forget warm introductions and polished decks. Wintermute's process acts as a merciless filter, sifting through hundreds of proposals with a focus on tangible traction and sustainable models over hype. It's a numbers game where the house—armed with deep market liquidity insights—almost always wins.

Beyond the Checkbook

Funding is just the entry ticket. The real value proposition for that chosen 4% is access to Wintermute's liquidity engine and its sprawling network across centralized and decentralized exchanges. In a market starving for reliable market depth, that's often worth more than capital alone.

The New Due Diligence

This ultra-selective approach signals a broader industry pivot. The era of spraying capital at every whitepaper is over. Now, it's about strategic capital paired with operational leverage—a shift that could squeeze out the flimsy projects propped up by cheap money during the last cycle. After all, what's a venture fund without a few cynical jabs at 'disruptive' ideas that mainly disrupt their own burn rate?

The message is clear: in the current landscape, only the most resilient and sharply defined builders need apply. Everyone else is just noise.

Outbound sourcing drove Wintermute’s deal flow

Proactive outbound sourcing remained the primary driver of Wintermute’s pipeline, with the company stating it hunted for the best builders. “This is complemented by referrals and investor introductions,” the company wrote on X.

While financial infrastructure accounted for the majority of deal flow, the firm increasingly focused on foundational platforms across diverse sectors.

Outbound efforts accounted for 36% of the deals’ source, while referrals, which were broken into Wintermute referrals, investor referrals, and founder referrals which accounted for 31%, 11%, and 3% of the deals, respectively.

The company stated that the most common fundraising structures it used in 2025 were equity, simple agreements for future equity (SAFE), and token warrants, adding that they “align the structure with the founder’s vision for the long-term outcome.”

The firm emphasized that it looks for fundamental utility capable of surviving HYPE cycles, with the question of whether value accrues to a cap table or a network treated as secondary to the problem being solved.

Wintermute identified velocity as an area requiring improvement, noting, “There’s room to improve for our early-stage internal review process.” It also wrote, “Faster responses create a better experience for everyone, especially the founders we’re here to support. We owe it to them to be responsive and quick in our turnaround times.”

The entire industry became selective with funding

Wintermute’s stringent approach reflects the state of the larger investment market, where investors are now more cautious before writing the check.

Crypto venture capital funding surged 433% in 2025 to $49.75 billion from $9.33 billion the previous year, according to RootData. However, the number of disclosed projects fell by 42.1%

According to The Block’s data, digital asset treasuries (DATs) received the highest investments in 2025. However, there was a decline in funding for early-stage startups.

Infrastructure, stablecoins, and regulated offerings attracted the bulk of investor attention. Industry-wide venture deal counts fell roughly 60% year over year.

Wintermute says it is ready to make more investments

Despite the selective stance it took in 2025, Wintermute Ventures stated that it is maintaining an active investment posture heading into 2026. 

The firm, which has backed over 100 companies and protocols since 2020, said, “We are always eager to connect with founders who find us first. Whether you’re building a Core protocol or the enterprise infrastructure supporting it, and whether you’re raising a seed or growth round, we actively lead investment rounds and want to hear from you.”

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