Crypto venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz is doubling down on cryptocurrency investments despite a severe market downturn, seeking $2 billion for a recent crypto fund.
A16z Crypto, the blockchain arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is raising its fifth cryptocurrency-focused fund, scheduled to close by mid-2026. According to to Fortune, citing anonymous sources on Wednesday.
The latest round is significantly smaller than its previous $4.5 billion fund from 2022, but the company has moved to a shorter fundraising cycle to remain adaptable to the ever-changing crypto narrative.
The move comes amid a crypto bear market that has seen its total market capitalization wipe out more than $2 trillion from a peak of around $4.4 trillion in early October.
According to his 2024 book, A16z cryptography head Chris Dixon’s Web3 philosophy envisioned a decentralized Internet with applications built on blockchains: “Read, write your own.”
However, many of these investments have not been successful, most notably X (Twitter) decentralized competitor Farcaster, which returned $180 million to investors after selling its infrastructure in January.
Crypto VCs explore non-crypto technologies
Wall Street cryptocurrency enthusiasts have recently narrowed their focus toward stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization, and financial products, and many venture capitalists have followed this shift. Others began to look into other areas of technology.
Co-founder of venture firm Multicoin Capital, Kyle Samani, stepped down in February to “explore new areas of technology” such as artificial intelligence, longevity and robotics.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency firm Paradigm is expanding into artificial intelligence and robotics, with its latest fund seeking to raise $1.5 billion, it reported in overdue February.
Related: Crypto is falling, but tokenized RWA and VC are moving forward
In January, A16z raised more than $15 billion to invest in companies and technologies it deemed critical to securing America’s future, mentioning artificial intelligence and cryptography and including technologies in “key human-generating areas” such as biology, health, defense, public safety, education and entertainment.
A16z sees opportunity in AI and cryptocurrencies in 2026
A16z recently highlighted that cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence are top themes for 2026, stating that yes expected Artificial intelligence will automate cybersecurity work, artificial intelligence models will become app stores, privacy will become “cryptography’s most important moat”, prediction markets will become “bigger, broader and smarter”, and stablecoins will become more tied to time-honored banking and finance.
According to the DeFiLlama fundraiser aggregatorcrypto startups raised $895 million in February, down almost 40% from the $1.47 billion raised the previous month and slightly less than the $1 billion raised in February 2025.
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