Franklin Templeton Seeks $20M for First Blockchain Venture Fund

Franklin Templeton is seeking to raise $20 million for what appears to be the investment firm’s first blockchain venture capital fund.

An affiliate of the San Mateo, Calif.-based company registered “Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund I, L.P.” with U.S. securities regulators Wednesday. Documents were short on details but noted the fund has raised $10 million from a single sale thus far.

Representatives for Franklin Templeton, which has $1.5 trillion in assets under management, declined to immediately comment. A blockchain venture fund tends to invest in startups building their businesses on distributed ledger technology. Many raise well over $20 million in rounds led by firms with hundreds of millions of dollars in play, making Franklin Templeton’s initial fund comparatively tiny.

Even so, the fund is another indication of Franklin Templeton’s expanding interest in crypto. It is already working to hire crypto traders and researchers, CoinDesk reported earlier this month.

Read more: Mutual Fund Giant Franklin Templeton Eyes Bitcoin, Ether Trades With Planned Hires

On Wednesday, the company also had job postings for engineers in a “Tokenized Asset Development Department.”

“We are looking for talented developers and thinkers to join us in building an entirely new platform that will dramatically expand the concept of investing and asset management as it relates to the entire Digital Asset domain,” the job posting said.

It asked for candidates experienced in “public blockchain protocols,” including Algorand, Ethereum, Solana, Stellar and Tendermint.