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The Lisk EMpower Fund targets post-incubation Web3 startups in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, bridging the capital gap and unlocking outsized returns in regions where Web3 adoption is already mainstream.
ZUG, Switzerland, Oct. 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Lisk, the growth platform designed for Web3 founders in high-growth markets, today announced the launch of the Lisk EMpower Fund, a $15 million venture initiative aimed at backing Web3 startups solving real-world problems in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In addition to the launch of the Lisk EMpower fund, Lisk is excited to announce four early recipients: Lov.cash, a South African digital supply chain platform, Afrikabal, an African Agritech platform, IDRX, an Indonesian stablecoin, and SigraFi, who finances small gold producers and issues gold-backed onchain loan notes.
While developed markets often see competitive and dense VC activity and higher valuations, the Lisk EMpower Fund is hyper-focused on emerging markets where adoption is organic, purpose-driven, and transformative. To date, VCs are overlooking a $5.2 trillion opportunity in emerging markets, where small-to-medium-sized businesses remain underfunded.
"Global VCs have become obsessed with speculation. In high-growth markets, the opposite is true. Founders are solving real problems with real utility and that is where the next unicorns will come from," said Gideon Greaves, Head of Investments at Lisk.
High-growth markets offer significant growth opportunities, leveraging emerging technology to develop innovative solutions that solve local challenges that otherwise could not be solved by traditional technology. Many founders bootstrap to Series-A level traction without ever raising institutional seed capital. Yet, a knowledge gap remains in the opportunities to invest in these regions.
Emerging markets have consistently outperformed public benchmarks, delivering 9-11% annualized venture returns over the past 10-15 years, according to Cambridge Associates. Lisk believes this marks the start of a generational bull run in emerging markets, driven by unprecedented innovation and the rapid adoption of transformative technologies. In contrast, U.S. seed-stage venture has become oversaturated, with record-high early-stage valuations and near-zero three-year returns. This creates an opportunity to back high-growth founders in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia at fair valuations, while generating uncorrelated, venture-scale returns.
The disconnect is Lisk's opportunity. The Lisk EMpower Fund addresses a critical gap that most VCs continue to miss. By backing founders at the earliest stages, the Lisk EMpower Fund delivers more than capital, it offers hands-on advisory, Web3 experience, and resources, becoming long-term partners with the founders at the intersection of local impact and global growth.
"Emerging markets are no longer the future of Web3, they are the present," said Dominic Schwenter, COO at Lisk. "The Lisk EMpower Fund is designed to bridge the capital gap for world-class founders who are building global companies from these ecosystems."
The Lisk EMpower Fund model integrates incubation, assessment, and growth capital through a scalable, end-to-end pipeline designed to accelerate high-potential ventures.
- Web3-Native: Dedicated capital for infrastructure and applications solving real-problems in payments, remittances, identity, and supply chain.
- Emerging Markets: Targeting regions that are ripe for organic adoption and have the potential to scale globally.
- Hands-on Advisory: Beyond capital, Lisk operates as a boutique investment bank for startups, supporting founders in refining their narratives, structuring for international fundraising, and securing proper Series A and B rounds.
- Tokenized Fund Structure: The Lisk EMpower Fund utilizes tokenization to streamline LP subscriptions, provide secondary market liquidity, and open access to retail LPs, who are traditionally excluded from venture funds.
By investing in the essential digital infrastructure of emerging economies, Lisk generates venture-scale returns uncorrelated with saturated Western markets. Its structured investment model is designed to de-risk early-stage ventures while providing hands-on advisory support to prepare them for global institutional investment.
Through strategic partnerships with leading local incubators, Lisk gains early access to pre-vetted deal flow across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Selected companies are eligible to receive $250,000 in capital alongside strategic support, ranging from investor-grade financial modeling and legal structuring to access to Lisk's global VC network.
This past September, Lisk celebrated its growing community of founders at ETHSafari, Africa's largest Ethereum conference. For more information, visit www.lisk.com/fund and access Lisk's media kit here.
About Lisk
Lisk is a growth platform designed for Web3 founders in high-growth markets. We provide the tools founders need to build and scale: capital, local programs, key partnerships, and an Ethereum-aligned Layer 2 primed for deployment.
Lisk takes a founder-first approach that's both committed and hands-on. We collaborate with teams from early concepts through go-to-market, with on-the-ground teams in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, helping transform regional challenges into real opportunities.
As a founding member of the Optimism Superchain, Lisk is helping shape the industry's first fully interoperable network, expanding access for builders with minimal fees, intuitive user experiences, and solutions designed to address local challenges.
Since its inception in 2016, Lisk has focused on tangible routes to Web3 adoption, supporting founders who are tackling pressing local issues and developing lasting solutions.
The Lisk EMpower Fund targets post-incubation Web3 startups in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, bridging the capital gap and unlocking outsized returns in regions where Web3 adoption is already mainstream.
ZUG, Switzerland, Oct. 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Lisk, the growth platform designed for Web3 founders in high-growth markets, today announced the launch of the Lisk EMpower Fund, a $15 million venture initiative aimed at backing Web3 startups solving real-world problems in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. In addition to the launch of the Lisk EMpower fund, Lisk is excited to announce four early recipients: Lov.cash, a South African digital supply chain platform, Afrikabal, an African Agritech platform, IDRX, an Indonesian stablecoin, and SigraFi, who finances small gold producers and issues gold-backed onchain loan notes.
While developed markets often see competitive and dense VC activity and higher valuations, the Lisk EMpower Fund is hyper-focused on emerging markets where adoption is organic, purpose-driven, and transformative. To date, VCs are overlooking a $5.2 trillion opportunity in emerging markets, where small-to-medium-sized businesses remain underfunded.
"Global VCs have become obsessed with speculation. In high-growth markets, the opposite is true. Founders are solving real problems with real utility and that is where the next unicorns will come from," said Gideon Greaves, Head of Investments at Lisk.
High-growth markets offer significant growth opportunities, leveraging emerging technology to develop innovative solutions that solve local challenges that otherwise could not be solved by traditional technology. Many founders bootstrap to Series-A level traction without ever raising institutional seed capital. Yet, a knowledge gap remains in the opportunities to invest in these regions.
Emerging markets have consistently outperformed public benchmarks, delivering 9-11% annualized venture returns over the past 10-15 years, according to Cambridge Associates. Lisk believes this marks the start of a generational bull run in emerging markets, driven by unprecedented innovation and the rapid adoption of transformative technologies. In contrast, U.S. seed-stage venture has become oversaturated, with record-high early-stage valuations and near-zero three-year returns. This creates an opportunity to back high-growth founders in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia at fair valuations, while generating uncorrelated, venture-scale returns.
The disconnect is Lisk's opportunity. The Lisk EMpower Fund addresses a critical gap that most VCs continue to miss. By backing founders at the earliest stages, the Lisk EMpower Fund delivers more than capital, it offers hands-on advisory, Web3 experience, and resources, becoming long-term partners with the founders at the intersection of local impact and global growth.
"Emerging markets are no longer the future of Web3, they are the present," said Dominic Schwenter, COO at Lisk. "The Lisk EMpower Fund is designed to bridge the capital gap for world-class founders who are building global companies from these ecosystems."
The Lisk EMpower Fund model integrates incubation, assessment, and growth capital through a scalable, end-to-end pipeline designed to accelerate high-potential ventures.
- Web3-Native: Dedicated capital for infrastructure and applications solving real-problems in payments, remittances, identity, and supply chain.
- Emerging Markets: Targeting regions that are ripe for organic adoption and have the potential to scale globally.
- Hands-on Advisory: Beyond capital, Lisk operates as a boutique investment bank for startups, supporting founders in refining their narratives, structuring for international fundraising, and securing proper Series A and B rounds.
- Tokenized Fund Structure: The Lisk EMpower Fund utilizes tokenization to streamline LP subscriptions, provide secondary market liquidity, and open access to retail LPs, who are traditionally excluded from venture funds.
By investing in the essential digital infrastructure of emerging economies, Lisk generates venture-scale returns uncorrelated with saturated Western markets. Its structured investment model is designed to de-risk early-stage ventures while providing hands-on advisory support to prepare them for global institutional investment.
Through strategic partnerships with leading local incubators, Lisk gains early access to pre-vetted deal flow across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Selected companies are eligible to receive $250,000 in capital alongside strategic support, ranging from investor-grade financial modeling and legal structuring to access to Lisk's global VC network.
This past September, Lisk celebrated its growing community of founders at ETHSafari, Africa's largest Ethereum conference. For more information, visit www.lisk.com/fund and access Lisk's media kit here.
About Lisk
Lisk is a growth platform designed for Web3 founders in high-growth markets. We provide the tools founders need to build and scale: capital, local programs, key partnerships, and an Ethereum-aligned Layer 2 primed for deployment.
Lisk takes a founder-first approach that's both committed and hands-on. We collaborate with teams from early concepts through go-to-market, with on-the-ground teams in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, helping transform regional challenges into real opportunities.
As a founding member of the Optimism Superchain, Lisk is helping shape the industry's first fully interoperable network, expanding access for builders with minimal fees, intuitive user experiences, and solutions designed to address local challenges.
Since its inception in 2016, Lisk has focused on tangible routes to Web3 adoption, supporting founders who are tackling pressing local issues and developing lasting solutions.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Lisk Launches $15M Venture Fund to Back Founders Powering Web3's Fastest Growing Markets
- New framework brings together Aon's Risk Capital and Human Capital data with public sentiment analysis from Gallup to create a portfolio view of risk
- Creates further clarity into how risks compound across four megatrends, how resilience is built and activated and where targeted actions can most effectively influence performance
DUBLIN, Jan. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, announced today that it is releasing insights from a new, data-driven tool to help organizations build sustainable resilience and unlock growth: Aon's Resilience Quotient.
Developed in collaboration with Gallup, Aon's Resilience Quotient responds to a critical insight: in a time of increasing populism and fragmented sources of information, quantitative data alone is not enough to make long-term decisions. Combining public sentiment on global issues with risk and people data and analytics enables greater clarity and confidence to invest and grow amidst uncertainty and volatility.
By integrating Aon's proprietary Risk Capital and Human Capital analytics with the results of Gallup's World Poll covering 140 countries for more than 20 years, the firm's Resilience Quotient captures both objective conditions and subjective sentiment, revealing where sentiment signals hidden risks and potential opportunities to achieve greater resilience. This system-level view enables leaders to spot emerging risks sooner, prioritize resilience investments and move from reactive risk management to proactive decision-making.
"When making decisions around investment, workforce or managing geopolitical risk, a portfolio view is far superior to a siloed perspective," said Greg Case, president and CEO of Aon. "Understanding sentiment can be an opportunity signal or an early warning. Leaders who are limited to only some of the relevant metrics risk missing the signals that matter most. Aon's Resilience Quotient delivers an integrated view to help organizations act decisively, strengthen resilience and unlock sustainable growth."
Four interconnected megatrends – Trade, Technology, Weather and Workforce – are reshaping the global operating environment in ways that traditional models struggle to anticipate. Aon's Resilience Quotient provides a clearer view of the tradeoffs within these interactions: how trade volatility can amplify technology risk, how climate pressures influence workforce mobility and how sentiment can either reinforce resilience or heighten operational risk, even when the fundamentals appear strong.
To illustrate the insights from its Resilience Quotient, the firm published three case studies addressing some of the most relevant and urgent issues facing the 2026 global economy:
- Realizing the Opportunity of AI: Securing Data Center Growth
Data centers are the backbone of the digital economy and with nearly $1.3 trillion projected to be invested globally in data centers by 2030, their rapid expansion brings unprecedented risks. Aon's Resilience Quotient shows that resilience varies sharply at the sub-national level, often more than underlying risk. Within the U.S., Iowa emerges as the most resilient destination for data center development, combining very low overall risk with exceptionally strong trade and weather resilience. "Aon's Resilience Quotient shows that Iowa's resilience–risk balance is roughly twice the national median, demonstrating how governance quality, institutional confidence and preparedness materially shape long-term infrastructure outcomes," said Joe Peiser, CEO of Commercial Risk Solutions at Aon. "This underscores the opportunity for leaders who understand the combined effect of low risk, resilient trade and weather systems and a strong foundation of public trust — factors that ultimately determine where AI infrastructure can grow at scale."
DUBLIN, Jan. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, announced today that it is releasing insights from a new, data-driven tool to help organizations build sustainable resilience and unlock growth: Aon's Resilience Quotient.
Developed in collaboration with Gallup, Aon's Resilience Quotient responds to a critical insight: in a time of increasing populism and fragmented sources of information, quantitative data alone is not enough to make long-term decisions. Combining public sentiment on global issues with risk and people data and analytics enables greater clarity and confidence to invest and grow amidst uncertainty and volatility.
By integrating Aon's proprietary Risk Capital and Human Capital analytics with the results of Gallup's World Poll covering 140 countries for more than 20 years, the firm's Resilience Quotient captures both objective conditions and subjective sentiment, revealing where sentiment signals hidden risks and potential opportunities to achieve greater resilience. This system-level view enables leaders to spot emerging risks sooner, prioritize resilience investments and move from reactive risk management to proactive decision-making.
"When making decisions around investment, workforce or managing geopolitical risk, a portfolio view is far superior to a siloed perspective," said Greg Case, president and CEO of Aon. "Understanding sentiment can be an opportunity signal or an early warning. Leaders who are limited to only some of the relevant metrics risk missing the signals that matter most. Aon's Resilience Quotient delivers an integrated view to help organizations act decisively, strengthen resilience and unlock sustainable growth."
Four interconnected megatrends – Trade, Technology, Weather and Workforce – are reshaping the global operating environment in ways that traditional models struggle to anticipate. Aon's Resilience Quotient provides a clearer view of the tradeoffs within these interactions: how trade volatility can amplify technology risk, how climate pressures influence workforce mobility and how sentiment can either reinforce resilience or heighten operational risk, even when the fundamentals appear strong.
To illustrate the insights from its Resilience Quotient, the firm published three case studies addressing some of the most relevant and urgent issues facing the 2026 global economy:
"Aon's Resilience Quotient shows that Iowa's resilience–risk balance is roughly twice the national median, demonstrating how governance quality, institutional confidence and preparedness materially shape long-term infrastructure outcomes," said Joe Peiser, CEO of Commercial Risk Solutions at Aon. "This underscores the opportunity for leaders who understand the combined effect of low risk, resilient trade and weather systems and a strong foundation of public trust — factors that ultimately determine where AI infrastructure can grow at scale."
- Workforce Transformation: AI Adoption and the Next Generation Workforce
The acceleration of AI adoption is transforming the workforce, but most organizations face a critical gap between the demand for AI skills and their readiness to adapt. The Resilience Quotient highlights how workforce engagement, trust and institutional preparedness are essential to harnessing AI's potential, making resilience the key differentiator between organizations that thrive through change and those that risk falling behind. "Aon's Resilience Quotient equips leaders to navigate rapid AI change with confidence," said Lisa Stevens, chief administrative officer at Aon. "These insights help create the conditions for early‑career employees to build the skills and confidence they need — so instead of losing a generation of talent, we cultivate one that is more capable and resilient than ever."
"Aon's Resilience Quotient equips leaders to navigate rapid AI change with confidence," said Lisa Stevens, chief administrative officer at Aon. "These insights help create the conditions for early‑career employees to build the skills and confidence they need — so instead of losing a generation of talent, we cultivate one that is more capable and resilient than ever."
- Rethinking Humanitarian Finance: A New Approach to Forced Migration
Over 120 million people are currently displaced by conflict, climate and systemic crises, reshaping societies and economies worldwide. Aon's Resilience Quotient highlights Venezuela and Colombia to illustrate the tradeoffs between investing resources at the source of migration — supporting those facing institutional erosion, food insecurity and economic collapse — or directing investment to more stable countries like Colombia that are absorbing people fleeing unlivable conditions. "Forced displacement results from extreme weather and man-made disasters like conflict and economic failure," said Bridget Gainer, chief public affairs officer at Aon. "If we could leverage the forecasting and financial capability of insurance to better predict and more quickly mitigate the impact of this volatility, we could help create conditions that allow populations to remain and rebuild in their home countries."
"Forced displacement results from extreme weather and man-made disasters like conflict and economic failure," said Bridget Gainer, chief public affairs officer at Aon. "If we could leverage the forecasting and financial capability of insurance to better predict and more quickly mitigate the impact of this volatility, we could help create conditions that allow populations to remain and rebuild in their home countries."
"Resilience is not a single blueprint, it's the way systems mitigate, adapt and transform under pressure. Aon's Resilience Quotient functions as a pressure gauge, surfacing the trade‑offs and early signals that help leaders strengthen resilience where it matters most," said Joe Daly, managing partner at Gallup. "We're proud to collaborate with Aon to combine Gallup's global sentiment analytics with Aon's Risk Capital and Human Capital data, turning confidence into actionable insight."
New insights from Aon's Resilience Quotient suggest that going forward, resilience priorities will shift from static risk management to dynamic, localized strategies. As disruptions become more complex and frequent, organizations will need to tailor resilience investments to specific geographies, sectors and even sub-regional contexts. Aon's Resilience Quotient is supported with a real-time analytics and AI-enabled insights platform, built by Quantum Rise, providing deeper visibility into evolving risk and resilience signals as conditions change.
Aon and Gallup will join global decision-makers at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting to advance these critical discussions on restoring confidence and unlocking sustainable growth.
Learn more about Aon's Resilience Quotient and explore the case studies here.
About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE: AON) exists to shape decisions for the better — to protect and enrich the lives of people around the world. Through actionable analytic insight, globally integrated Risk Capital and Human Capital expertise, and locally relevant solutions, our colleagues provide clients in over 120 countries with the clarity and confidence to make better risk and people decisions that help protect and grow their businesses.
Follow Aon on LinkedIn, X, Facebook and Instagram. Stay up-to-date by visiting Aon's newsroom and sign up for news alerts here.
Media Contact
mediainquiries@aon.com
Toll-free (U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico): +1 833 751 8114
International: +1 312 381 3024
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Aon's Resilience Quotient Cuts Through Uncertainty and Volatility to Help Businesses Move from Risk to Resilience and Growth
