Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm and high-profile crypto investor Andreessen Horowitz has raised $2.75 billion for two new funds, according to a company announcement published on May 1.
The lion’s share of the new capital will go toward a specialized $2 billion late-stage venture fund (LSV Fund I), headed by Andreessen Horowitz general partner David George.
The $750 million has meanwhile been raised for a sixth general fund — focused on early-stage enterprise, consumer and fintech offerings — which will sit alongside the company’s existing specialized cryptocurrency and bio funds.
As managing partner Scott Kupor notes in yesterday’s announcement, cryptocurrency was still in its nascency when the venture capital firm launched in 2013. The creation of its crypto-dedicated $350 million crypto fund, a16z — which backs a range of ventures from blockchain projects to initial coin offerings (ICOs) — prompted the firm to hire its first female general investing partner in 2018, as Cointelegraph reported at the time.
Since then, Andreessen’s Horowitz’s $350 million crypto fund, a16z, has invested in blockchain startup MakerDAO (MKR) — which stands behind ether-based stablecoin Dai (DAI) — stablecoin project Basis and institutional crypto custodian Anchorage, as well as blockchain cloud computing startups DFINITY and Oasis Labs.
This February, the University of Michigan’s $12 billion endowment revealed plans to bolster its investment in Andreessen Horowitz’s “cryptonetwork technology fund” (CNK Fund I).
Andreessen’s Horowitz’s website also lists bitcoin (BTC), ether(ETH), decentralized DNS startup Handshake, dYdX exchange and stablecoin trueusd operator Trusttoken among its crypto-related investments.
Last month, Andreessen’s Horowitz announced it was restructuring by registering all of its employees as qualified financial advisors and renouncing its former status as a venture capital firm. The restructuring will ostensibly enable the company to take riskier bets on certain business areas, including cryptocurrencies.
