Crypto VC firm Paradigm has raised $1.2 billion – its third venture fund and fourth overall – with the aim of investing across the “tech frontier,” says the firm’s founder Matt Huang. announced Wednesday.
For Paradigm, the technological frontier will extend beyond its cryptocurrency investing roots. The fund is expected to expand its investment focus to include robotics and AI. This isn’t a surprising move, given how hot the AI market has become over the past few years, while crypto has faced challenges.
Paradigm isn’t abandoning crypto entirely, according to blog post Written by Huang and Alana Palmedo, managing partner of the firm. The company will “continue to invest in crypto and reinvent the markets and financial system” and “will continue to research and build where it drives the industry, from blockchain tools (Foundry, Wraith) to agent tools (Centaur) to security functionality (EVMBench, collaboration with OpenAI),” the pair wrote.
But AI and robotics are also priorities. in an interview with bloomberg“There’s so much more going on that it’s just too hard to ignore,” Palmedo said.
Paradigm’s Fund III has already made some investments, including drone delivery company zipline and space startup True anomaly.
The firm, which was founded in 2018 by former Sequoia partner Huang and Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, filed to raise funds earlier this year. According to SEC filings. The fund size is slightly less than $1.5 billion The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the company was trying to raise money.
