Founded by Ukrainian serial entrepreneur Denis Belkevich and former Christie’s COO Roxanna Zarnegar, the New York-based Art+Tech startup accelerator Fuelarts raised $500K from philanthropic funders.
- Over the next two years, Fuelarts plans to invest the funds raised in solutions focusing on provenance, transactions, gamification, and more.
- The accelerator also intends to launch an Art+Tech VC fund in the next a few years.
- Founded in late 2019, Fuelarts was forced to scale back its operations due to the pandemic.
- Over the past year, the company has worked with four Art+Tech startups in a private acceleration mode, following the changes in the Art Market. Accelerator provides a unique program with a dual focus on Art+Tech.
The result of this work will be the first Demo Day, which will take place on October 28, 2021 in New York. The first Fuelarts batch includes:
- Ukrainian V-Art – a platform designed to exhibit, sell, and collect digital art, which recently raised $150K. In September, the company launched a new NFT marketplace;
- Artherium – a multifunctional NFT art inventory app called;
- Sarturn – a platform that gamifies art investment, connecting Gen Z with galleries and artists;
- Fresh or Trash – a platform that helps exchange artworks for goods and services.
According to Fuelarts’ research, based on Crunchbase data, investors poured $380 million into art-focused tech startups during the 2020-21 fiscal year. In a single year, the industry funding amounted to nearly 60% of its total investment over the last two decades ($640 million).
Denis Belkevich, founder and CEO of the accelerator: “The art world has finally embraced the power of technology. Until very recently, traditional collectors have been committed to practices that ‘strangled’ the development of new solutions. Now the market is ready, but Art+Tech startups are struggling to find places where they can flourish. In most museum-run programs they end up stifling their business ideas, while traditional accelerators rarely understand art and end up trying to ‘reinvent the Uber.’
Roxanna Zarnegar, Fuelarts’ co-founder and board member: “Fuelarts was developed to provide community and purpose for talented art tech entrepreneurs.”
Via American Entrepreneurship Today
