Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On January 9, amidst a highly active cryptocurrency market, the venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced the completion of a new $15 billion fundraising round. This is the largest fundraising effort in the firm's history, accounting for over 18% of the total venture capital raised in the United States in 2025.
In the relatively brief official announcement, a16z mentioned cryptocurrency twice. The most critical statement, "Our mission is to ensure that the United States wins the technological competition of the next 100 years, which begins with winning the key architectures of the future—artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency technology," indicates that a16z, now well-funded, will continue to actively invest in the cryptocurrency market.
Breakdown of Six Major Directions
According to a16z's plan, this batch of funds will be allocated across six major directions: the American Dynamism fund will receive $1.176 billion, the App fund $1.7 billion, the Bio + Health fund $700 million, the Infrastructure fund $1.7 billion, the Growth fund $6.75 billion, and the Other Venture Strategies fund $3 billion.
Although a16z did not explicitly designate a dedicated cryptocurrency fund in this fundraising, these six directions actually have significant overlap with cryptocurrency.
First is the American Dynamism fund. This is a direction with a clear "political" focus that a16z has been promoting in recent years. Its core goal is to use venture capital to rebuild America's "hard power" and national competitiveness. The fund will primarily invest in aerospace, defense, public safety, education, housing, supply chain, industry, and manufacturing—objectively speaking, this fund has little crossover with cryptocurrency.
Next is the App fund. This is one of a16z's most traditional and VC-centric funds. Its core goal is to focus on application-layer products that can be directly used by consumers. The fund will mainly invest in consumer internet products, AI applications, creator tools, social products, content services, gaming, fintech, and Web3 applications—this is also the direction where a16z's cryptocurrency narrative is most easily realized.
Then comes the Bio + Health fund. This is a long-term bet for a16z beyond "pure technology." Its core goal is to use software, data, and engineering thinking to transform the life sciences and healthcare systems. The fund's main investment areas include biotechnology, drug development platforms, gene editing, synthetic biology, medical data and AI diagnostics, and healthcare infrastructure software—this part has little direct overlap with cryptocurrency, but DeSci could be a potential intersection point.
The Infrastructure fund focuses on infrastructure. Its core goal is to provide an irreplaceable technological foundation for the next generation of applications and platforms. The fund's main investment areas are cloud computing and distributed systems, AI infrastructure, data platforms, developer tools, network protocols, and blockchain underlying protocols (L1, L2, other tools)—this is another core battleground for a16z in the cryptocurrency space, alongside the App fund.
The Growth fund primarily invests in Series C and later stages, as well as Pre-IPO stages. Its core goal is not to find new opportunities but to amplify returns by supporting proven winners. The fund mainly invests in mature tech companies, AI platforms, fintech unicorns, and mature Web3 infrastructure or applications—a16z's official website shows that Coinbase, Kalshi, and others are explicitly categorized here.
The Other Venture Strategies fund is relatively special. It does not have a single theme but is more like a flexible "tactical capital pool," often used for special structure transactions, cross-fund collaborative investments, emerging field experimentation, secondary market opportunities, regional or thematic experimental funds, etc.—this fund has little direct crossover with cryptocurrency, but it cannot be ruled out that temporary associations may occur at special junctures, such as responsive moves during certain policy windows.
Looking at the six intended directions for this $15 billion, the App fund, Infrastructure fund, and Growth fund will be the main channels for a16z to inject capital into the cryptocurrency primary market. Among them, the App fund and Infrastructure fund will focus more on native application-layer and protocol-layer projects in the cryptocurrency market, respectively; while the Growth fund will focus more on platform-type services such as exchanges and prediction markets, and its investments will tend to favor leading players in sectors that have already shown advantages.
a16z's Investment Review for 2025
According to incomplete statistics from Odaily Planet Daily, a16z made a total of 31 investments in the broader cryptocurrency field over the past year, with two investments each in prediction market Kalshi, AI security company Doppel, and privacy blockchain Seismic—especially Kalshi. a16z first co-led a $300 million Series D funding round for the company in October with Sequoia, at a valuation of $5 billion; it invested again in November, participating in the company's $1 billion Series E funding round at a valuation of $11 billion—this was a16z's biggest bet in the cryptocurrency field last year.
As can be seen from the statistics in the chart above, aside from the heavy bet on prediction markets, wallet services, privacy blockchains, stablecoins, and the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency were the focus of a16z's布局 in 2025. These sub-sectors can be categorized into the blockchain underlying protocols and tools covered by the Infrastructure fund, and the fintech and AI applications covered by the App fund.
a16z's Predictions for 2026
On New Year's Day 2026, a16z Crypto officially published a New Year's outlook article. In the article, a16z mentioned 17 potential developments they are excited about for 2026, which may contain clues to the firm's focus areas for future investments.
These 17 potential developments are:
- Privacy will become the most important moat in crypto;
- Prediction markets will become larger, broader, and smarter;
- Thinking more "crypto-natively" about real-world asset tokenization and stablecoins;
- Trading is just a waystation for crypto businesses, not the final destination;
- From "Know Your Customer" (KYC) to "Know Your Agent";
- Better, smarter on-ramps and off-ramps for stablecoins;
- Stablecoins will kick off a bank ledger upgrade cycle and spawn new payment scenarios;
- The future of instant messaging is not just quantum-resistant, but also decentralized;
- From "code is law" to "norms are law";
- Crypto is providing a new kind of foundational primitive whose uses go beyond blockchains themselves;
- We can now use AI to perform substantive research tasks;
- The "invisible tax" of the open internet;
- The rise of Staked Media;
- "Secrets-as-a-Service";
- Wealth management for everyone;
- The internet is becoming the bank;
- When the legal framework finally matches the technical framework, the full potential of blockchains will be unleashed.
Among these 17 potential developments, some explicitly mention specific business models, including the sectors a16z has already heavily invested in, such as privacy, prediction markets, stablecoins, and AI. a16z also directly provided optimization paths for related models, such as the need for smarter on-ramp and off-ramp solutions for stablecoins.
At the same time, another part of the potential developments belongs to imaginings of future states, such as the internet eventually becoming the bank. However, how these imaginings will be realized is not clearly answered by a16z—this question needs to be left to entrepreneurs who can bring innovative solutions, and they are precisely the targets that a16z's $15 billion is most eager to find.
