Paradigm Raises $1.5B for AI x Crypto
Crypto VC giant Paradigm has closed a new $1.5 billion fund, expanding its mandate beyond pure crypto to target AI and frontier technologies like robotics. The raise is one of the largest in the ecosystem over the past year and signals a major institutional capital shift toward the AI and crypto intersection.
The new fund marks a pivot from Paradigm's last raise in 2024, which was a comparatively smaller $850 million early-stage crypto fund. This followed their record-breaking $2.5 billion fund in 2021, a move some analysts suggest was a reaction to the shrinking number of large-scale, early-stage crypto projects capable of absorbing that level of capital. Co-founder Matt Huang has stated that developments in AI are "too interesting to ignore," viewing the two fields as non-zero-sum with significant future overlap. The firm's leadership reportedly did not want to be constrained in ways that would cause them to miss compelling deals in adjacent high-growth technology sectors. This isn't Paradigm's first foray into the AI space. In April 2025, the firm led a $50 million Series A funding round for Nous Research, a project focused on decentralized AI and open-source models. This investment valued the project at $1 billion on a token basis, signaling a clear bet on the intersection of decentralized infrastructure and AI. Paradigm has also collaborated directly with major AI players. In February 2026, the firm worked with OpenAI to release EVMbench, a new benchmark for evaluating how well AI models can detect and patch security vulnerabilities in smart contracts. The investment thesis focuses on synergies like "agentic payments," where autonomous AI agents execute transactions on-chain. Other identified areas of convergence include decentralized AI infrastructure, verifiable machine learning using cryptographic proofs, and autonomous systems that require programmable money. With this new capital, Paradigm will utilize its existing technical investment team to source deals in these frontier technologies rather than building a separate unit. The San Francisco-based firm currently has approximately $12.7 billion in assets under management, according to regulatory filings.
