Beyond memecoins: Pump.fun seeks the next big startup with its $3 million fund

Beyond memecoins: Pump.fun seeks the next big startup with its $3 million fund

Pump.fun has launched Pump Fund, a $3 million investment fund aimed at technology startups.

The decentralized finance platform Pump.fun, which gained popularity for facilitating the launch of memecoins, has begun an institutional expansion phase with the launch of Pump Fund, an investment arm designed to capitalize early-stage technology startups.

With this initiative, the protocol makes clear its interest in evolving beyond simply creating viral tokens. The platform seeks to stimulate the growth of startups with disruptive potential, offering funding and resources that connect the world of cryptocurrencies with the real-world development of digital products and solutions.

This recent launch places Pump.fun in a new stage of expansion, strengthening its role within the Web3 ecosystem and positioning itself as an active agent in the promotion of global talent and entrepreneurship.

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Pump Fund promotes open development in Web3

Pump.fun announced the official launch of Pump Fund through its X account, accompanied by its program “Build in Public”, a 30-day initiative designed to boost the development of emerging technology projects. 

Through a hackathon with a total prize pool of $3 million, the platform will select 12 teams, each receiving $250.000 and an initial valuation of $10 million per project. Pump Fund aims to provide a starting point that combines capital, visibility, and strategic support to accelerate the early stages of development for each project.

Beyond funding, the selected teams will receive direct mentorship from the founders of Pump.fun and access to a collaborative network that integrates both the Web3 ecosystem and traditional technology sectors. This approach aims to connect talent with resources, creating an environment conducive to the agile execution of new digital solutions.

The protocol developers emphasized that the model used to organize this hackathon breaks with the traditional format by combining venture capital principles with those of decentralized finance. Each team must issue a token associated with its project, maintain at least 10% of the total supply, and build a community on social platforms like X. This aims to align the interests of the creators and the community, allowing market value and support to determine which ideas achieve the greatest success. Each team's progress will be publicly documented, promoting transparency and collective evaluation.

In the words of the protocol team:

“Instead of having to please judges/venture capitalists for money, tokenization allows the market to become the judge.

Your users are the ones who finance you, believing in you from the beginning.”

More than an investment fund, Pump Fund aims to transform emerging talent in the digital environment into sustainable companies that integrate technological innovation, active community, and transparency into their growth.

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Solana's platform seeks a balance between innovation and real-world utility.

Pump.fun, built on the Solana blockchain, set the trend in the memecoin boom during 2024 and early 2025, facilitating millions of new tokens and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. 

In July 2025, its PUMP token raised over $1.000 billion in just a few minutes, solidifying the project's notoriety within the crypto ecosystem. However, the enthusiasm didn't last long: monthly trading volume peaked at $11.750 billion in January but fell to $2.430 billion in December, reflecting lower demand for meme assets, which are mostly considered speculative tokens.

However, in recent months, the platform has regained momentum. It reached its highest point in three months with over 30.000 tokens launched in a single day, driven by new rewards for creators. It is in this context that Pump Fund was born, an initiative that expands the protocol's reach to include investment in startups with the goal of balancing the memecoin market cycles. In other words, the fund seeks to leverage Solana's high-speed infrastructure to incubate solutions that rely not only on viral storytelling but also on the responsible use of blockchain technology in sectors such as finance, logistics, and the creative economy. 

By diversifying its business model, the platform seeks to mitigate its dependence on euphoria cycles, focusing on a portfolio of startups that provide consistent long-term value to the crypto ecosystem. 

On the other hand, Pump.fun's turnaround coincides with broader transformations within the crypto space. The passage of the GENIUS Act in 2025 provided a more defined regulatory framework for stablecoins and opened the door to greater institutional participation. At the same time, the SEC is moving forward with securities tokenization programs, while the digitization of traditional assets, from gold to real estate, could exceed $80.000 billion before the end of the year, according to expert projections. 

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Pump.fun drives a new stage of global crypto incubation

In short, the creation of Pump Fund marks a consolidation phase for the organization, which now operates as an incubator capable of supporting projects from their initial stages to full development. The team has structured an evaluation model based on concrete metrics such as developer activity and the rate of organic adoption, factors that will serve to measure the performance of investments during the first months of operation. The goal is to attract professionals with technical expertise willing to leverage the network's liquidity and community support to scale their projects more efficiently.

By prioritizing projects with practical applications, Pump.fun's new initiative contributes to a more organized and professional digital environment. Expanding into the funding of global startups not only strengthens their competitiveness but also provides a clear path for digital asset innovation to translate into companies with a real impact on the global economy.