Headline: Crypto VCs to prioritize “quantum-ready” infrastructure as 2027 deadline looms, Moon Pursuit founder says Lead: As venture capital flows rebound into large AI and advanced-tech firms, crypto investors are already shifting focus toward post-quantum security and migration tools — a trend Moon Pursuit Capital founder Utkarsh Ahuja says will accelerate into 2027. His warning: the race to prepare blockchains, wallets and custody systems for a future quantum threat is not about predicting the exact day a quantum computer can break current cryptography, but about buying time for complex, multi-year migrations. Big-picture funding snapshot - Global VC funding totaled $227.4 billion in Q2 across 8,440 deals, KPMG’s Venture Pulse found — the second-highest quarterly total on record. - Q1 had set a record at $332.9 billion, buoyed by massive raises such as OpenAI’s $122 billion round. Anthropic contributed a $65 billion raise in Q2. - US companies captured $144.9 billion across 3,644 deals (about 64% of global investment). Other notable US rounds included Project Prometheus ($12 billion) and Anduril Industries ($5 billion). - Quantum-computing investment cooled from 2025’s peak but remained meaningful: QuantWare $178 million, eleQtron $66 million, and Quantinuum’s $1.6 billion Nasdaq listing (valuing it at $17.6 billion). Why quantum readiness matters now Ahuja told crypto.news that the uncertain arrival date for a quantum-capable machine that could break today’s blockchain cryptography doesn’t negate the investment case. Migrating a chain, moving billions in assets, changing wallet software and coordinating custodians and users across decentralized networks can take years — meaning preparation must start well before breakthroughs occur. “We think quantum is going to force crypto investors to think much further ahead than they traditionally have,” Ahuja said. For VCs, that means shifting dollars toward: - post-quantum cryptographic tooling, - migration and upgrade infrastructure, and - designs that let networks and wallets accept future security upgrades with minimal disruption. What investors will look for Moon Pursuit will scrutinize how easily a company’s product can adapt when cryptographic requirements change. Key criteria include whether a provider can migrate users and assets to new systems without widespread disruption — a particular challenge for public blockchains where upgrades can’t be forced on every wallet, custodian, and validator simultaneously. IP protection and patents also factor into investment decisions, since migration tools are attractive targets for copycats. Case study: AmericanFortress Moon Pursuit co-led an $8 million seed round for AmericanFortress (with SAVA Digital Asset Fund and 0G Labs). The startup has proposed ZK-PoSP, a quantum-resistant signing approach that would let wallets prove control of their original seed without exposing it. In theory, ZK-PoSP could cover Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana addresses without forcing holders to move funds or rotate keys. Important caveats: the design remains a proposal that requires node-level upgrades to be enforceable on-chain, and AmericanFortress itself describes its post-quantum protection as conjectural rather than validated against an actual quantum attack. Moon Pursuit said it backed the company partly because the technology is designed to integrate with existing infrastructure — easing potential adoption and migration. From theory to market: separating science from investability Ahuja urges investors to focus less on predicting a single scientific milestone and more on whether a company addresses an existing, commercial pain point with a realistic adoption path that doesn’t hinge on rapid quantum hardware advances. “Separating scientific progress from an investable business model is going to be increasingly important,” he said. Crypto VC landscape and institutional moves - According to Galaxy Research, Q1 2026 saw about $4 billion invested across 355 crypto and blockchain deals — down 50% quarter-on-quarter and with 16% fewer deals, largely due to a drop in large later-stage financings. - Trading, exchanges, investing and lending firms took roughly $2.6 billion (about 60% of the quarter). Infrastructure had 56 deals; privacy and security had 22. Fundraising for crypto-focused VCs also lagged: eight new funds raised $1.1 billion in Q1 — the fewest new funds since Q3 2020. - US startups claimed 70.2% of crypto VC capital and 43.5% of deals in the quarter; median deal size exceeded $4.5 million (though valuation data was sparse and skewed toward later stages). Cross-disciplinary opportunities Ahuja noted that boundaries between digital assets, AI, cybersecurity and quantum are blurring. “Some of the most interesting opportunities now sit between them.” He expects protocols and applications to continue attracting capital, but predicts more investment into the underlying systems that let institutions use digital assets securely — and that post-quantum protection is a practical sale because companies can market migration and hardening services well before quantum hardware becomes an imminent threat. Standards and industry responses - NIST finalized its first three post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards in August 2024 and has urged early adoption. Its timeline targets deprecating quantum-vulnerable algorithms by 2030 and removing them from standards by 2035, with higher-risk systems migrating sooner. These deadlines govern federal standards, not decentralized blockchains directly, but they set expectations for enterprise and institutional players. - Institutional actors are already funding defensive work. In July, a Bitcoin security consortium formed with backers including BlackRock, Coinbase and others pledging $15 million over three years to support research, development and teams — while explicitly not directing Bitcoin development or endorsing a specific protocol change. Members named include Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets and Galaxy. - Ethereum’s roadmap also reflects post-quantum thinking: researcher Justin Drake said Ethereum plans to move away from the Poseidon hash and back to established functions like SHA-2 or BLAKE2s for future layer-1 designs. A production version of leanVM is scheduled for 2027, with protocol deployments planned in 2028. - At the custody layer, BitGo and Silence Laboratories ran a May test of post-quantum signing using ML-DSA (part of NIST’s FIPS 204), preserving distributed key control and institutional policy checks. Bottom line VCs are starting to treat quantum readiness as a practical, near-term investment theme rather than an abstract future risk. For crypto companies, that means designing systems that can migrate safely and practically — and for investors, it means backing technologies with clear paths to adoption, defensible IP and the operational realism to move assets and users without chaos. As timelines for quantum-capable hardware remain uncertain, the work of hardening wallets, custody, and blockchain infrastructure is already underway. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news