Paradigm raises $1.2B fund for technical frontier startups
▼ Summary
– Crypto VC firm Paradigm has raised $1.2 billion for its third venture fund, announced by founder Matt Huang.
– The fund will expand its investment focus beyond crypto to include robotics and AI, reflecting current market trends.
– Paradigm will continue investing in crypto and blockchain tools, as stated by Huang and managing partner Alana Palmedo.
– Fund III has already invested in drone delivery company Zipline and space startup True Anomaly.
– The fund is slightly smaller than the $1.5 billion target, as per earlier SEC filings and a Wall Street Journal report.
Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm has secured $1.2 billion for its third venture fund, marking the firm’s fourth overall fundraise. Founder Matt Huang announced the news on Wednesday, stating the capital will target what the firm calls the “technical frontier.”
That frontier, however, extends well beyond the company’s original focus on cryptocurrency. The new fund is expected to broaden Paradigm’s investment scope to include robotics and artificial intelligence. The shift makes sense given the explosive growth of the AI sector in recent years, even as the crypto market has weathered significant turbulence.
Paradigm is not walking away from crypto, according to a blog post co-authored by Huang and managing partner Alana Palmedo. The firm will “continue investing in crypto and the reinvention of markets and the financial system” and will “continue to research and build where it accelerates the industry, from blockchain tools (Foundry, Reth) to agent tools (Centaur) to security work (EVMbench, a collaboration with OpenAI).”
Still, AI and robotics have become impossible to overlook. In an interview with Bloomberg, Palmedo said, “There’s so much else happening right now that’s pretty hard to ignore.”
Fund III has already deployed capital into several ventures, including drone delivery company Zipline and space startup True Anomaly.
Paradigm, co-founded in 2018 by Huang (a former Sequoia partner) and Fred Ehrsam (co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase), filed to raise the fund earlier this year, according to SEC filings. The final amount is slightly below the $1.5 billion the firm originally sought, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in February.
(Source: TechCrunch)
