blockworks.co
Venture capital behemoth Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has raised the largest-ever crypto venture fund: $4.5 billion.
The vehicle, the firm’s fourth, brings a16z’s total crypto and Web3 holdings to $7.6 billion.
The launch makes good on a plan unveiled in January, when the company published a now-updated investment thesis predicated on the “power of software” as “the encoding of human thought, and as such has an almost unbounded design space.”
“We think we are now entering the golden era of Web3,” general partner Chris Dixon said in a blog post announcing the new fund. “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.”
Talent flocks to the industry during a bull market, Dixon told the audience at last week’s Permissionless conference in Palm Beach, adding that a bear market is the prime time for builders to focus on what comes next.
The fund will invest in Web3 startups that run the gamut from DeFi, to gaming, infrastructure, DAOs, NFTs, privacy, decentralized social media “and many other areas.”
The firm also plans to expand its in-house staff to meet the vetting needs of additional startup investments.
We will also keep expanding the a16z crypto operating teams that provide world-class support to our founders, spanning research and engineering, security, talent & people, legal & regulatory, go-to-market, and a lot more.
— AriannaSimpson.eth (@AriannaSimpson) May 25, 2022
The crypto portfolio of a16z consists of several dozen companies, including big names like Dapper Labs, dYdX, OpenSea, Near, Solana, Phantom and Uniswap. The most recent addition is Flowcarbon, which is building an on-chain carbon credit tokenization platform.
“Our frequent conversations with builders have given us the confidence to go big, and we’re grateful to be your partner,” Dixon wrote of the latest fund.
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