Two years after raising $ 300 million for its first investment fund dedicated to bitcoin and other cryptocurrency projects, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm has raised a second fund with a similar theme. The new vehicle, which closed on Thursday and focuses on blockchain technology, the database innovation behind cryptocurrency, totals $ 515 million.
“It’s very rare that major new computing paradigms emerge, and we believe this is at the scale of the cloud and mobile devices for the Internet,” says Chris Dixon, one of the fund’s leaders. He says he expects to see the debut of many new blockchains, including those from previous fund holdings, such as the hyped “world computer” Dfinity, in the next year.
Andreessen Horowitz was one of the early VC believers in Bitcoin and blockchain technology. In January 2014, its co-founder Marc Andreessen, who co-founded the former king of Internet browsers Netscape and is now on Facebook’s board, extolled the virtues of digital money in an influential article.
It allows users to earn interest on their deposits; and Celo, a mobile payments startup. Other bets include Coinbase; Protocol Labs, which is building Filecoin, a decentralized file storage alternative to Dropbox; and crypto custodian Anchorage.
Andreessen made a bold move last year by becoming a registered investment advisor, a distinction awarded by the Securities and Exchange Commission that gives him more flexibility to invest in things like crypto tokens.
Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor who manages the crypto fund and sits on the board of the Libra Association, cornered by Facebook, refuses to disclose the performance of the first fund to date, but notes that the firm plans to keep its bets long. finished. hour. term, up to 10 years.
Haun also speaks highly of the Libra Association. One of the fund’s early investments, Libra has been gaining new members in recent months, including Shopify and Checkout.com, despite losing bigwigs like Visa, PayPal and Mastercard last year.
“We have come a long way since the Libra Association was first announced, and we will start to see how it develops in the coming months,” Haun says.
