a16z Goes Frontier: Crypto Fund Gets an AI Wing, Not an Exit

Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm better known as a16z, is renaming its crypto fund “a16z Frontier” and expanding its mandate to AI and other emerging technologies, according to an email shared with newsletter subscribers Thursday. The firm called the move “an expansion” and wrote: “we will continue to invest in crypto and related ventures and advocate for sensible crypto regulation,” adding that crypto remains part of its mandate. Chris Dixon, the general partner who runs a16z’s crypto team, said its investments include Coinbase, the blockchain network Solana, and Uniswap, a platform where people swap tokens without a middleman.

Dixon said blockchains—shared digital ledgers that record who owns what without a bank in the middle—have faded into the background of products people already use. “Wall Street and fintech companies now regularly launch products built on blockchains. Does that make them crypto companies? The label matters less now,” Dixon wrote. He said it makes more sense to define companies “by what they do rather than by the technologies they use.”

a16z announced Friday that it has raised over $15 billion across five separate venture funds to propel American technology. The $15 billion represents more than 18% of all venture funds raised in the U.S. in 2025, according to co-founder Ben Horowitz. In January, a16z said it had raised more than $15 billion across its funds, while Horowitz wrote in a firm post that its mission “starts with winning the key architectures of the future—AI and crypto.”

Dixon expects more “native use cases,” which he defines as “brand-new activities you couldn’t do before,” as AI increasingly makes existing work such as coding “faster, better, and cheaper.” He said early products “will look strange and unserious, like toys and hobbies,” before some grow into mainstream offerings.

The a16z Frontier label covers startups “building new technologies and creating markets that may take years to develop,” Dixon said, tracing the strategy to his joining a16z in 2013. “When I joined a16z in 2013, I made these kinds of long-horizon investments a focus,” he wrote. “The growth of smartphones made cameras, sensors, and chips better and cheaper, enabling new devices like drones, AR/VR headsets, and wearables. That theme led to investments in Oculus and drone startups like Skydio and Zipline.” Dixon also identified “autonomous machines that can perceive, reason, and act in the physical world,” advances in biology and medicine, and a post-AGI society as longer-term opportunities, describing artificial general intelligence as a still-theoretical AI capable of matching or beating humans at nearly all thinking tasks.