The newest fund at a16z Crypto is no longer limited to crypto. Managing partner Chris Dixon wrote in a post at noon ET Thursday that the firm is “expanding the scope of our new fund beyond crypto startups to the broader category of frontier startups,” meaning bets on new technologies whose markets could need years to form.
The team now goes by a16z Frontier, and its old a16zcrypto.com blog address redirects to a new domain. Dixon described the move as “an expansion” and said the firm “will continue to invest in crypto and related ventures and advocate for sensible crypto regulation.”
a16z closed its fifth crypto fund at $2.2 billion in May, lifting its total across five crypto funds to $9.8 billion. Dixon’s post did not give a fund size or say how much of the capital could go outside crypto.
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Why Dixon dropped the label
Dixon argued that blockchains have become less visible as they spread, with Wall Street firms and fintechs now shipping products on them. “The label matters less now,” he wrote. In his view, it “makes more sense to define companies by what they do rather than by the technologies they use.”
He listed brand-new uses of AI, robots and other autonomous machines, biology and medicine, and startups that mix software, hardware and services, along with networks where people and intelligent agents transact. Crypto, he argued, can give those systems economic capabilities of their own, including machine-to-machine transactions. “These are examples, not boundaries,” he wrote.
Dixon said he will share the fund’s leadership with Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet, both general partners, and with a16z co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
Yahya heads out
General partner Ali Yahya wrote in a post on X at 7:33 p.m. ET Thursday that he has “decided to leave @a16z, move to SF, and start a company.” The Information had reported that morning that Yahya told some investors he planned to leave.
Yahya joined Dixon in 2017 from Google, where he says he worked on robotics as a Google Brain engineer. When a16z promoted him to general partner in 2021, it called him the “first full-time member of the crypto team.” He said his company is early but will focus on “building infrastructure that enables open software ecosystems,” starting from the view that AI use will move from one person talking with one agent to many people and agents working together. He called himself “forever an a16z superfan” and thanked the firm’s partners by name.
Crypto investor Paradigm announced a $1.2 billion fund in July and said it now works “across AI, robotics, and other frontiers.”
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