Outlier Ventures is one of Europe's earliest dedicated Web3 venture and acceleration platforms, founded in 2013 by Jamie Burke in London, United Kingdom. The firm began as a research-driven investment operation and evolved into a full accelerator model, with a particular focus on open data economies, decentralised infrastructure, and the convergence of artificial intelligence with blockchain technology. It operates primarily through its flagship programme, Base Camp – a remote-first accelerator that runs multiple cohorts per year and accepts teams at the pre-seed and seed stage.
Outlier Ventures positions itself as a thesis-led investor rather than a generalist fund. Early theses centred on the tokenisation of data and machine economies; later work produced the widely cited "Open Metaverse OS" framework, which argued that decentralised ownership and interoperability would define the next generation of virtual environments. More recently, the firm has published extensively on the intersection of AI agents and crypto rails. Total assets under management are not publicly disclosed.
Outlier Ventures has backed more than 100 projects across its cohorts and direct investments. Geographic focus is global, with strong representation from European and North American founding teams. The firm is listed on Crunchbase as an active investor and accelerator.
Notable investments
- IOTA – directed acyclic graph ledger for machine-to-machine payments; one of Outlier's earliest headline bets.
- Fetch.ai (FET) – autonomous AI agent network; subsequently merged into the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance alongside SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol.
- Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) – decentralised data marketplace; also merged into the ASI Alliance in 2024.
- Brave / Basic Attention Token (BAT) – privacy browser with an attention-based advertising economy.
- Boson Protocol – decentralised commerce infrastructure connecting physical goods to NFT vouchers.
- Agoric – JavaScript-based smart contract platform backed by multiple cohort rounds.
- Faraway – Web3 gaming studio, part of a broader push into on-chain gaming ecosystems.
Team
Jamie Burke is the founder and Chief Executive Officer. He previously worked in digital strategy and innovation consulting before launching Outlier Ventures. Burke has been a consistent public voice on open metaverse design principles and crypto regulation in Europe. Lawrence Lundy-Bryan served as Head of Research for several years and contributed substantially to the firm's published theses; his current role at the firm is not confirmed in recent public sources. The firm employs a team of venture partners and sector specialists across DeFi, gaming, and AI, though a full current partner list is not consistently disclosed publicly.
Recent activity
Through 2024 and into 2025, Outlier Ventures ran multiple Base Camp cohort tracks segmented by theme – including dedicated tracks for DeFi, gaming, and AI-plus-crypto projects. The firm increased its public output on agentic AI systems and their overlap with token incentive design, publishing several reports through its research portal. A notable portfolio event was the 2024 merger of Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNET into the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI), which consolidated three Outlier-adjacent assets into a single token and entity – a significant outcome given the firm's early thesis on machine economies.
Outlier Ventures carries a retail ROI of 4.08x across tracked investments, reflecting a mixed but positive long-term record in a volatile asset class. Its clearest strength is thesis consistency: the firm identified machine-economy and open-data narratives before they became mainstream, and several portfolio assets validated that view. The accelerator model – high throughput, remote-first, structured mentorship – has become a template that other crypto-native funds have since copied. Key risks going forward include accelerator market saturation and the challenge of generating outsized returns from a large cohort pipeline where most projects will not reach meaningful liquidity.
