As another sign of venture capital money increasingly fueling the cryptosphere’s disruption of legacy finance, US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has unveiled plans to raise up to USD 4.5bn to launch new crypto-focused funds -- potentially more than doubling the amount it raised less than one year ago.
Last week, the VC firm told investors it was determined to raise up to USD 3.5bn for its latest crypto venture fund, and up to USD 1bn for a separate fund that would focus on seed investments in digital asset start-ups, reported The Financial Times, citing "people briefed on the discussions".
Andreessen Horowitz aims to finalize the new funds by March, one of the persons said. The US company did not provide a comment.
The latest development comes shortly after the venture capital powerhouse disclosed it raised USD 9bn for its Venture, Growth, and Bio funds, enabling a16z to invest “across the entire spectrum of stages, writing checks as small as USD 25,000 and up to hundreds of millions of dollars.” That expansion brought the firm’s assets under management to more than USD 28bn.
The Silicon Valley-based business has a track record of backing successful ventures, as it was an early investor in a number of major tech companies. These include Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Stripe, and major crypto exchange Coinbase, among others.
Data released by financial data and software company PitchBook in December indicated that, breaking all previous records, venture capital firms had invested some USD 30bn into crypto last year year -- exceeding almost fourfold the amount recorded in the previous record year of 2018. As a matter of fact, the amount VC funds injected into the industry in 2021 exceeded all the previous years
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