Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also referred to as a16z, has recently announced it raised $9 billion that will be distributed among the company’s new trio of investment funds. The company made headlines last year when it launched a massive $2.2 billion crypto fund and later led a $100 million Series B investment in OpenSea, the largest non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in the world.
Key takeaways:
- According to the company’s press release, the funds will be distributed among the new lineup of funds – $1.5 bln will go towards the Bio fund investing in biotech-focused companies, $5 bln will be allocated to the Growth fund, and the remaining $2.5 bln to the Venture fund.
- The a16z team wrote that freshly acquired capital will be used to push the company’s vision of a “technology-enabled future.”
- The company will reportedly invest in companies at various stages of development – a16z will be “writing checks as small as $25,000 and up to hundreds of millions of dollars.”
- Andreessen Horowitz is one of the more prominent financial backers in the cryptocurrency space – a16z made investments in some of the more successful crypto projects to date, including Uniswap, OpenSea, Near Protocol, Compound, Avalanche, and many more.
- The company’s $2.2 billion crypto fund launched in June was the third of its kind; the first crypto investment vehicle launched in 2018 was worth $300 million, while the second, launched in 2020, was worth $515 million.
- Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz founded Andreessen Horowitz in 2009, driven by a simple question: “How to win the future?” The company took early stakes in tech unicorns Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Airbnb, and Slack.
- A16z’s first crypto investment came in late 2013 when the company invested $20 million in leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. At the time, Coinbase’s valuation was $143 million. Eights years later, Coinbase is a publicly-traded company with a market cap of $46.65 billion.
- Andreessen Horowitz held $18.8 billion in assets under management (AUM), as of August 31, 2021.
