Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is the latest venture capital giant to expand beyond crypto into AI and emerging technologies. The industry that once promised to change the world is struggling to keep its own investors focused.
a16z said it is broadening its crypto investment arm, a16z Frontier, to cover artificial intelligence, robotics and other emerging technologies.
Today we’re announcing that we’re expanding the scope of our new fund beyond crypto startups to the broader category of frontier startups: companies building new technologies and creating markets that may take years to develop.
To reflect this, we’re renaming a16z Crypto to a16z Frontier.
This is an expansion: we will continue to invest in crypto and related ventures and advocate for sensible crypto regulation.
It follows a similar move by Paradigm, another major crypto investor, which has expanded beyond digital assets into AI and robotics.
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The shift exposes an uncomfortable reality for crypto:
Even the investors who helped build the industry are looking elsewhere for the next big opportunity.
Crypto promised to reinvent finance, ownership, and the internet. Yet years of funding, token launches, and billion-dollar valuations have not translated into equally compelling real-world utility across much of the industry.
AI, meanwhile, is attracting capital with a broader range of applications from software development and business automation to autonomous machines.
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According to Chris Dixon, Managing Partner at a16z Frontier:
Now we are in the middle of another major tech wave centered on AI.
The buildout of AI models and infrastructure will continue, but the tech is already sufficiently advanced to spawn a new generation of products and services.
Blockchain may still have a role in that future, particularly in payments, financial infrastructure, and machine-to-machine transactions. But crypto can no longer assume that venture capital will keep treating it as the centre of technological innovation.
The question is no longer how much money crypto can raise.
It is whether the industry can build something valuable enough to keep that money from going elsewhere.
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