The a16z fund will hold new rounds of investments in cryptocurrency startups

Venture fund a16z will hold new rounds of investments in cryptocurrency startups

Andreessen Horowitz Venture Fund's cryptocurrency division is the largest investor in the Web3 segment

Andreessen Horowitz Venture Fund, also known as a16z, plans to invest $3.4 billion in early-stage projects, including crypto startups, Axios reports.

The company plans to start raising funds for investment later this year and hopes to close all deals in the first half of 2024.

Andreessen Horowitz Venture Fund, or a16z, was founded in 2009 by Marc Andriessen and Ben Horowitz with an initial capital of $300 million. Now, according to Crunchbase, the company has 27 funds under management that have collectively raised $32.4 billion. a16z crypto division was created specifically to invest in cryptocurrency projects. The total amount of the company's four crypto funds exceeds $7 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz's cryptocurrency division remains the largest investor in the Web3 segment and leads rounds of crypto projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The company's top crypto investment this year was the LayerZero project. Its developers, led by a16z, closed a $120 million round, after which the valuation of the company behind it, LayerZero Labs, jumped to $3 billion. Other projects in the fund's portfolio with investments of more than $100 million include Optimism, Aleo, Matter Labs (developer of the zkSync solution) and several others.

In July this year, K33 Research published a report in which it revealed that venture capital funding for the Web3 segment fell sharply in the first quarter of 2023, showing a drop of 80% compared to the same period last year.

Amount raised and number of investments by month. Source: Cryptorank

According to the Cryptorank service, venture capital investments in crypto startups totaled $6.75 billion in the first nine months of 2023, down 82% from last year's figure for the same period.

This summer, the a16z fund and Snoop Dogg helped raise $20 million for music NFT startup Sound.