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Venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz announced on Wednesday it has raised a $4.5 billion fund for backing crypto and blockchain companies.
Despite the current crypto market crisis, American VC Andreessen Horowitz (@a16z) has closed a $4.5 billion new crypto fund. The firm’s new fund doubles the size of its last crypto effort, which was launched less than a year ago. pic.twitter.com/icSMfsO5BV
— Swipeline (@Swipeline_Media) May 25, 2022
In the midst of the crypto market turbulence, the Silicon Valley firm invested its fourth cryptocurrency fund, which is considered to be the largest individual crypto fund acquired. Having the total funds raised to more than $7.6 billion.
In a blog post, a16z indicated that they see a “golden era” of Web 3, with programmable blockchains that are becoming sufficiently advanced and a diverse range of apps that have reached tens of millions of users.
With a massive wave of talent and great entrepreneurs entering Web 3, it resulted in the firm to see how big the opportunity is, which made them dedicate $3 billion to venture investments and $1.5 billion to seed investments.
Addressing the bear market, the firm’s general partners, Arianna Simpson and Chris Dixon, believe a lot of companies are built during times of market instability since it allows investors and companies to focus on the long term and not be distracted by short term fluctuations.
In an interview, Simpson said “The technical diligence and the other kinds of diligence that we do are a key part of making sure that projects meet our bar,”. She also added that while the pace of investment has been high, the firm continues to invest to only the top echelon of founders.
With this in mind, Simpson and Dixon think crypto represents a potential long-term opportunity on the scale of the next computing cycle, following PCs in the 1980s, the internet in the 1990s, and mobile computing in the early 2000s.
Andressen’s first crypto-focused fund was launched four years ago, a major crypto investment with Coinbase. The firm has since backed a variety of start-ups in the crypto and NFT space, specifically during the “crypto winter” downtown.
And as reported last week, Andreesen has raised $600 million to create its first gaming fund, with the goal of increasing the amount of investment in gaming apps, studios, and infrastructure to support the creation of a virtual world called the metaverse.