Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), announced today that it raised $4.5 billion for a new crypto fund. This will mark the firm’s fourth and biggest fund so far.
Crypto fund 4 is twice the size of the firm’s prior crypto fund raised June last year, showing that despite the turmoil in the crypto market, a16z’s partners are still optimistic about giving exposure to promising web3 startups.
A16z partner Chris Dixon wrote in a post: “We think we are now entering the golden era of web3. Programmable blockchains are sufficiently advanced, and a diverse range of apps have reached tens of millions of users.”
“More importantly, a massive wave of world-class talent has entered web3 over the last year. They are brilliant and passionate and want to build a better internet,” he added.
The company has stated that $1.5 billion of the whopping $4.5 billion will go towards seed investments, with the rest set aside for venture investments.
Dixon has expressed that the firm is “excited” about the latest advancements in sectors including decentralized social media, web3 gaming, layer-1, and layer-2 infrastructure, DAOs and governance, decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, creator monetization, regenerative finance (ReFi), and many other areas.
A16z’s announcement comes amidst a downtrend in the general crypto market following the fall of the TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister coin LUNA.
Despite the downtrend, the firms partner Ariana Simpson assured investors that the firm is confident about its decisions.
In an interview with CNBC Simpson stated, “Bear markets are often when the best opportunities come about, when people are actually able to focus on building technology rather than getting distracted by short-term price activity.”
She continued, “the technical diligence and the other kinds of diligence that we do are a key part of making sure that projects meet our bar.”
“While our pace of investment has been high, we continue to invest really in only the top echelon of founders,” says Simpson.
Currently included in the firm’s crypto portfolio are Alchemy, Avalanche, Celo, Dapper Labs, Phantom Wallet, OpenSea, Solana, and Yuga Labs.
The firm invested in blockchain-based carbon-credit trading platform Flowcarbon, which is also backed by controversial WeWork founder Adam Neumann.
Andreeseen Horowitz has also announced earlier this month their launch of GAMES FUND ONE, which is meant to invest $600 million across the gaming industry.
