Jake Brukhman

Background

Jake Brukhman is the Founder, CEO, and Managing Partner of CoinFund, one of the first blockchain-focused investment firms in the United States, founded in 2015 ¹. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, to two computer scientists, Brukhman learned to code at age fourteen ². He studied mathematics and computer science at the Rutgers College Honors Program, the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU, and University College London ².

Before founding CoinFund, Brukhman spent approximately ten years in financial and pure technology ³. He served as a technical product manager and engineer at Amazon.com, a financial technologist at Highbridge Capital Management, and Partner & CTO at Triton Research ²¹. His blockchain development experience dates back to 2011, when a friend introduced him to Bitcoin ³. He has stated that his early experience with Bitcoin gave rise to his belief that “the best way to invest in a network is to be part of it” ².

CoinFund was founded at a Brooklyn kitchen table ⁴ and has since grown into a firm managing over $550 million across multiple investment vehicles, with a team of over 30 people and more than 170 investments across six funds ⁵⁶. Key funds include the $83 million Seed III fund (2021), the $300 million Ventures I fund (2022), and the $158 million Seed IV fund (2023) ⁷⁸⁹.

Stated Thesis

Brukhman publicly describes CoinFund as championing “the leaders of the new internet” ⁵. CoinFund invests across seed, venture, and liquid stages within the blockchain sector, with a stated focus on digital assets, decentralization technologies, and key enabling infrastructure ⁵.

Brukhman has emphasized his conviction in decentralized AI as an emerging thesis. He has stated that CoinFund’s thesis on decentralized AI is that “Web3 networks will enable AI models to be crowd-resourced, trained, owned, and maintained as open and valuable public goods” ¹⁰. He has referred to 2025 as “deAI Summer,” arguing that decentralized networks could eventually “overtake the dominant players in machine learning today” ¹⁰.

On investment strategy more broadly, Brukhman has stated: “Investor interest in our latest fund demonstrates the strong demand for full stack problem solvers at the infancy stage of these blockchain and decentralization projects” ⁷. He has described CoinFund’s approach as focused on long-term conviction: “Your long term orientation and long term conviction space is probably your greatest ally” ³.

Brukhman has also stated that governance protections matter: he notes that 90% of projects CoinFund backs have “governance measures to protect investors and to restrict the distribution of their token supplies over a time frame of several years” ¹¹. On founder diligence, he has said: “From our perspective, we’ve never had to invest in something that had a purely anonymous founder” ¹¹.

Inferred Thesis

Based on 25 verified investments with confirmed CoinFund involvement, sourced from press releases, aggregator data, and CoinFund blog posts:

Sector distribution: CoinFund’s portfolio is heavily concentrated in crypto-native sectors. Of 25 verified investments: 7 are in DeFi/financial infrastructure (28%), 6 in blockchain infrastructure/L1s (24%), 4 in decentralized AI (16%), 3 in NFTs/gaming (12%), 3 in data infrastructure (12%), and 2 in other crypto verticals (8%).

Stage distribution: CoinFund invests primarily at seed and Series A. The Seed funds (Seed III at $83M, Seed IV at $158M) target pre-seed and seed-stage projects, while Ventures I ($300M) targets companies with commercial traction at Series A and beyond with $6-10M check sizes ⁸. The Seed III fund made 28 investments in 10 months, leading or co-leading 17 of them (approximately 60%) ⁷.

Geographic focus: CoinFund is based in Miami but invests globally in crypto-native projects. Many portfolio companies are globally distributed with no single geographic concentration, consistent with the borderless nature of blockchain projects.

Check size: Signal by NFX lists Brukhman’s check size range at $6M-$100M with a sweet spot of $8M ¹². Ventures I targets $6-10M per company across an expected 30-40 investments ⁸.

Founder profile patterns: Brukhman favors technical founders with deep protocol-level expertise. Portfolio companies are frequently led by engineers building core infrastructure (Matter Labs/ZKsync, Blockdaemon, The Graph, Irys). He has explicitly stated a preference for non-anonymous founders ¹¹.

Co-investor patterns: CoinFund frequently co-invests with other crypto-native funds. Notable co-investors across multiple deals include Multicoin Capital (LI.FI, Worldcoin), Pantera Capital (Ondo Finance), Distributed Global (Prime Intellect), and Coinbase Ventures (Veda, Ondo Finance).

Decentralized AI as emerging focus: A notable recent pattern is CoinFund’s increasing concentration in decentralized AI, with investments in GenSyn, Prime Intellect, and Pluralis Research all within 2024-2025 ¹⁰¹³¹⁴. This represents a deliberate thesis expansion beyond CoinFund’s traditional DeFi and infrastructure focus.

Notable gap: Despite claiming broad crypto coverage, CoinFund’s verified portfolio shows limited investment in pure payment/remittance protocols and consumer social crypto applications. The portfolio skews heavily toward infrastructure and financial primitives rather than consumer-facing crypto products.

Portfolio

This table represents approximately 24 of CoinFund’s 170+ total investments (roughly 14%). CoinFund’s full portfolio includes over 170 investments across six vehicles since 2015 ⁶. The table above captures the most notable and well-documented investments with confirmed CoinFund participation.

In Their Own Words

“I was shown Bitcoin by a friend of mine in 2011… I bought some Bitcoin on Coinbase… when it did click, I really started asking the question: what else can we apply this technology to?” — Jake Brukhman, Smart Humans podcast ³

“These new technologies are starting to come at us faster and faster, almost like playing an asteroid game or something.” — Jake Brukhman, Smart Humans podcast ³

“Your long term orientation and long term conviction space is probably your greatest ally.” — Jake Brukhman, Smart Humans podcast ³

“My biases are kind of like pro crypto and anti-TradTech a little bit.” — Jake Brukhman, Smart Humans podcast ³

“As a new participant just entering the space, it is absolutely much safer to stick with the big names. You’re not going to go wrong if you are investing in Bitcoin, investing in Ethereum. These are projects that have been around for over 10 years at this point.” — Jake Brukhman, Fortune, August 2025 ¹¹

“From our perspective, we’ve never had to invest in something that had a purely anonymous founder.” — Jake Brukhman, Fortune, August 2025 ¹¹

“If this works out, this is going to change the world.” — Jake Brukhman, on CoinFund’s investment in Pluralis Research, Fortune, March 2025 ¹⁴

“Everyone assumed there was not a viable solution to lowering bandwidth requirements.” — Jake Brukhman, on decentralized AI training breakthroughs, CoinDesk, July 2025 ¹⁰

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. CoinFund’s website features internal team perspectives on the firm’s approach, but specific quotes from portfolio founders about their experience working with Jake Brukhman or CoinFund were not found in public sources.

Sources