Original article | Odaily Odaily( @OdailyChina )
Author｜Azuma ( @azuma_eth )
On January 9, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a venture capital giant extremely active in the cryptocurrency market, announced the completion of a new $15 billion fundraising round. This is the largest fundraising round in the firm's history, accounting for more than 18% of the total venture capital investment in the United States in 2025.
In its relatively short official announcement, a16z mentioned cryptocurrency twice. The most crucial sentence, " Our mission is to ensure that the United States wins the technological competition of the next 100 years, starting with the key architecture for winning the future—artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency technology ," foreshadows that a16z, now well-funded, will continue to invest heavily in the cryptocurrency market.
Disassembly in six major directions
According to a16z's plan, this batch of funds will be used in six major areas, including $1.176 billion for the American Dynamism Fund, $1.7 billion for the App Fund, $700 million for the Bio + Health Fund, $1.7 billion for the Infrastructure Fund, $6.75 billion for the Growth Fund, and $3 billion for the Other Venture Strategies Fund.
Although a16z did not explicitly plan a dedicated cryptocurrency fund in this fundraising effort, these six areas actually have significant overlap with cryptocurrency.
First is the American Dynamism Fund, a strategic initiative promoted by a16z in recent years with a clearly "political" focus. Its core objective is to rebuild America's "hard power" and national competitiveness through venture capital. The fund will primarily invest in aerospace, defense, public safety, education, housing, supply chains, industry, and manufacturing—objectively speaking, the fund has little overlap with cryptocurrencies.
Secondly, there's the App Fund, one of a16z's most traditional and VC-centric funds. Its core objective is to focus on application-layer products that can be directly used by users. This fund will primarily invest in consumer internet products, AI applications, creator tools, social products, content services, games, fintech, and Web3 applications—which are also the areas where a16z's cryptocurrency narrative is most easily implemented.
Next is the Bio + Health Fund, a16z's long-term bet beyond pure technology, with the core objective of transforming the life sciences and healthcare system using software, data, and engineering thinking. The fund's main investment areas include biotechnology, drug discovery platforms, gene editing, synthetic biology, medical data and AI diagnostics, and healthcare infrastructure software—this part doesn't directly overlap with cryptocurrencies, but DeSci shows promise as a potential intersection.
The Infrastructure Fund focuses on infrastructure, with its core objective being to provide an irreplaceable technological foundation for next-generation applications and platforms. The fund's primary investment areas are cloud computing and distributed systems, AI infrastructure, data platforms, developer tools, network protocols, and blockchain underlying protocols (L1, L2, and other tools) – this is a16z's other core battleground in the cryptocurrency space, alongside the App Fund.
The Growth Fund primarily invests in Series C and pre-IPO rounds. Its core objective is not to find new opportunities, but to amplify returns by supporting proven winners. The fund mainly invests in established technology companies, AI platforms, fintech unicorns, and mature Web3 infrastructure or applications—according to a16z's website, Coinbase and Kalshi are explicitly categorized as such.
Other Venture Strategies funds are relatively unique. They do not have a single theme, but are more like a flexible "tactical pool of funds." They are typically used for special structured transactions, cross-fund synergistic investments, venturing into emerging fields, secondary market opportunities, regional or thematic experimental funds, etc. The direct crossover between these funds and cryptocurrencies is not significant, but temporary connections may occur at special junctures, such as responding to policy windows.
Looking at the six planned investment directions for this $15 billion fund, the App Fund, Infrastructure Fund, and Growth Fund will be a16z's main channels for injecting capital into the cryptocurrency primary market. Specifically, 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 services such as exchanges and prediction markets, and will tend to invest in leading players in established sectors.
A16z Investment Review in 2025
According to incomplete statistics from Odaily Odaily, a16z made a total of 31 investments in the cryptocurrency sector over the past year. Among these investments, it made two investments in each of the prediction market Kalshi, AI security company Doppel, and privacy blockchain Seismic . In particular, for Kalshi, a16z first co-led a $300 million Series D funding round with Sequoia Capital in October, valuing the company at $5 billion at the time. Then, in November, it made another investment, 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 sector last year.
As can be seen from the statistics above, apart from heavy betting on the prediction market, wallet services, privacy blockchains, stablecoins, and the cross-opportunities between AI and cryptocurrencies are a16z's key investment areas 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.
In 2026, a16z made this prediction.
On New Year's Day 2026, a16z Crypto officially released a New Year's outlook article. In the article, a16z mentioned 17 potential developments that it was excited about in 2026 , which may reveal the organization's focus on future market strategies.
These 17 potential developments are as follows:
- Privacy will become the most important moat in the crypto space;
- Predict that the market will become larger, broader, and smarter;
- Thinking about real-world asset tokenization and stablecoins in a more "crypto-native" way;
- Transactions are merely a transit point in crypto business, not the final destination;
- From "Know Your Customer" (KYC) to "Know Your Agent";
- Better and smarter stablecoin deposit and withdrawal channels;
- Stablecoins will initiate an upgrade cycle for bank ledgers and give rise to new payment scenarios;
- The future of instant messaging is not only quantum-resistant, but also decentralized;
- From "code is law" to "rules are law";
- Cryptography is providing a new type of fundamental primitive that can be used beyond the blockchain itself;
- We are now able to use AI to perform substantive research tasks;
- "Hidden taxes" in the open internet;
- The rise of staked media;
- "Secrets-as-a-Service"
- Wealth management for everyone;
- The internet is becoming a bank;
- When the legal framework finally matches the technical framework, the full potential of blockchain will be unleashed.
Among these 17 potential developments, some explicitly mention specific business models , including the areas that a16z has already focused on, such as privacy, prediction markets, stablecoins, and AI. a16z also directly provides optimization paths for related models, such as the need for smarter stablecoin deposit and withdrawal solutions.
Meanwhile, another potential development lies in imagining future scenarios , such as the internet eventually becoming a bank. However, a16z has not provided a clear answer as to how these imaginations can be realized. This question needs to be left to entrepreneurs who can bring innovative solutions, and they are precisely the targets that a16z is most looking for with its $15 billion.
