Morning Minute: a16z Drops 'Crypto' From Its Fund
The name change is symbolic of the fund’s future investing focus, though the firm will continue investing in crypto.
Andreessen Horowitz is renaming its crypto fund “a16z Frontier” and widening the mandate to cover AI, autonomous machines and biology. Chris Dixon, who has run the crypto team since 2018, leads the new fund alongside Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet.
Although “crypto” is removed from the name, the firm calls it “an expansion” and says it will keep investing in crypto. The most recent fund size on record is $2.2 billion, announced in May.
That’s what winning looks like for infrastructure. Nobody calls Stripe a “TCP/IP company.”
Dixon points to Oculus, Skydio and Zipline as the model: long-horizon bets that looked silly before they didn’t. In 2022, with the market down two-thirds from its peak, he said he judges the sector by developer and entrepreneur activity rather than price. He’s also explicit that crypto has a job in the new mandate: letting AI agents pay each other.
Still, the timing is the timing. This lands with bitcoin down on the year, ETFs bleeding through October, and capital inside every multi-strategy firm competing against an AI trade that has sucked up everything. A fund that was crypto-only now has to pitch crypto deals against autonomous machines and biology at the same partner meeting. That’s a real change, whatever you call it. And an uphill battle. But that’s crypto’s new reality. Game on…
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