We’re proud to announce the Artizen Fund for Human Creativity has raised $2.2M from crypto leaders like Path, Juan Benet, PleasrDAO’s Matt Condon, Airbnb’s Dan Hill, Consensys Mesh, Animoca Brands, Protocol Labs, and other investors.
At Artizen, we help creators raise money for new projects by selling cultural Artifacts from their work. Each Artifact is an open-edition NFT designed to capture the essence of a project and its impact on the world. “Artifacts can be an early sketch, concept art, a looping animation, or anything that documents an important milestone in a project’s life cycle,” says Artizen co-founder René Pinnell.
Every season we curate a new collection of Artifacts from projects at the frontier of art, science, technology, and design. Artifacts in our Official Selection are promoted and sold to collectors who want to invest in positive impact and join a vibrant community. To help creators sell more Artifacts, we provide match funding and award cash prizes to projects with the most Artifacts sold.
“As a fifth generation artist, I know how difficult it is to raise money for your work. It’s a biased and painfully complex process,” says Pinnell. “But at Artizen, we’ve developed a new way to fund human creativity. Instead of relying on bureaucratic institutions, we empower our community to curate and fund new projects by collecting Artifacts.”
Artizen has awarded over $750,000 to help fund top projects with well-known talent like Cate Blanchett, the Wu-Tang Clan, and legendary directors Terrence Malick and Darren Aronofsky. We have a proven track record of backing creators who impact the world, with projects routinely premiering at Sundance, the Venice Biennale, and other top-tier festivals.
Jess Sloss, the founder of Seed Club, the premiere web3 accelerator, lauded Artizen’s innovative approach. “The internet opened the doors for human creativity, but our system for funding innovative projects is still broken. I’ve had the privilege of watching the Artizen team tackle this challenge head on and their approach to selling cultural Artifacts is a potential game changer,” Sloss said.
Our latest collection of Artifacts runs until May 16th and features blue-chip creators who have shown at Miami Basel, The Whitney, Cannes, and other major cultural events. We’re thrilled to sell Artifacts from creators such as Render_Fruit, Nicole Ruggiero x PLANTTDADDII, Harriet Davey, Courtesy x ChannaStudio, Tabitha Swanson x Balfua, Maria Gudjohnsen x Sarah Banks, Leeza Pritychenko, Nico Casavecchia, and Valdimir Storm.
In line with Artizen’s creator-focused vision, the Artizen community will become one of the first to launch on Console.xyz, the decentralized, open-source, secure, and community-owned messaging platform.
“After funding hundreds of projects and years of experimentation, we’ve built something truly special. But this is just the beginning. We’ve got big ambitions,” adds Pinnell.
We hope you’ll join our mission to unlock human creativity. Together let’s reinvent how the world funds art, science, technology, and design.
About
Artizen is a community fund for art, science, technology, and design. Founded by René Pinnell and Ruben Campos, Artizen has assembled a world-class team of builders who have run product and engineering at companies like Meta, SoundCloud and Yahoo and who have raised over $50M for projects featuring creators as diverse as Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead and country music icon Willie Nelson.