Andreessen Horowitz has launched a multibillion-dollar fund focused on the crypto economy.
Founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm plans to deploy the $2.2 billion capital across blockchain and digital asset startups.
“The size of this fund speaks to the size of the opportunity before us: crypto is not only the future of finance but, as with the internet in the early days, is poised to transform all aspects of our lives,” Katie Haun and Chris Dixon, partners who run Andreessen’s cryptocurrency group, said in a blog post.
This is not the company’s first crypto-focused fund. Andreessen Horowitz launched its first crypto fund in 2018, a time when Bitcoin’s value cratered roughly 80% from the highs in 2017.
Since April, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has lost roughly half its value. This week, for instance, it’s heading for a 20% loss with prices poised to fluctuate even more.
Andreessen Horowitz’s latest fund, therefore, comes at a bearish moment for the crypto with the company’s partners being radically optimistic about crypto’s potential. “We believe that the next wave of computing innovation will be driven by crypto.”
Andreessen Horowitz and its investment portfolio
While the company is known for its early bets on companies like Facebook, Lyft, Pinterest, and Instagram, it scored a multi-billion dollar win when Coinbase went public earlier this year.
The VC firm is also an early investor in libra, a Facebook-backed digital currency project.
Andreessen Horowitz has stakes in OpeanSea and Dapper Labs, influencing the recent NFT boom. The firm plans to hold these crypto investments for more than a decade.
Andreessen’s cryptocurrency investments are being driven by Katie Haun and Chris Dixon. Haun is a former Justice Department prosecutor who helped to launch the Department’s first government task force for crypto and worked on the first high-profile crypto-related case, Silk Road. Before joining the VC firm, Dixon founded and ran two startups.
The company has also announced a wave of new hires for the fund. Former Securities Exchange Director, Bill Hinman, will join the firm as an advisory partner. Rachael Horwitz, who led communications at tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, will join as an operating partner.
