Paradigm Raises $1.2 Billion Fourth Fund, Expands Into AI and Robotics

Crypto venture firm Paradigm has raised $1.2 billion for its fourth fund and officially stepped outside blockchain for the first time, announcing investments in artificial intelligence and robotics. The San Francisco firm made the announcement on July 8. Crypto, the firm said, remains its core focus, but no longer its only one, and the raise ranks among the largest single fund closes the industry has seen in the past year.

A billion for new frontiers

Paradigm was founded in 2018 by Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam, a Coinbase co-founder. Over eight years the firm grew into one of the largest crypto venture investors in the world, backing everything from exchanges to infrastructure protocols. It raised a $2.5 billion crypto fund in 2021. It added an $850 million early-stage blockchain fund in 2024. Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase in 2012 and left the exchange in 2017, while Huang worked as a partner at Sequoia Capital before starting Paradigm, where he oversaw the firm's crypto investments.

The new fund is roughly 1.4 times larger than that figure. Across four rounds, Paradigm has now raised more than $4.5 billion in total assets under management. Money from the new fund will not go only to crypto startups: part of the capital, for the first time in Paradigm's history, will back companies in AI, autonomous hardware, and other fields the firm calls "steep exponentials."

Founders explain the shift

In an official statement, Paradigm described its principle simply: stay "close to the metal," researching, building, and investing alongside founders. First in crypto, now also in AI, robotics, and other emerging fields. Managing partner Alana Palmedo shared details on X.

"$1.2B to invest in steep exponentials. Eight years ago we were backed by people who believed in the crypto frontier. Now we're doubling down as frontiers are colliding across AI, crypto, space, deep tech, energy."

- Alana Palmedo, managing partner at Paradigm, in a post on X on July 8, 2026

A portfolio that bridges crypto and AI

Paradigm had already backed several projects at the intersection of these industries before announcing the fourth fund. Nous Research builds the Hermes Agent AI project on top of open models. Zipline flies drones that deliver medical supplies and already operates in several countries, from rural America to parts of Africa. True Anomaly builds satellites capable of tracking other objects in orbit and holds contracts with the US Space Force.

• The firm's crypto portfolio includes derivatives exchange Hyperliquid, one of the largest by trading volume in 2026, and prediction market platform Kalshi, which recently discussed a possible IPO on roughly $2 billion in revenue.
• Paradigm co-founded the stablecoin blockchain Tempo together with Stripe, built around payment infrastructure.
• Internal projects include the Ethereum tools Foundry and Reth, used daily by thousands of smart contract developers, plus an AI agent project called Centaur.
• Together with OpenAI, the team built EVMbench, a benchmark that tests whether AI models can find vulnerabilities in blockchain code.

The list shows Paradigm had been testing the overlap between crypto and AI long before the new fund, not starting the shift only now. The firm's own research projects have long stretched past pure crypto tooling, spanning both blockchain client development and AI-driven code security evaluation.

The bigger picture

Paradigm's move lines up with a broader industry push toward infrastructure for AI agents that can move money and complete transactions on their own. Coinbase launched its Coinbase for Agents effort last year, and Stripe is building its own stablecoin platform for automated payments. Both companies are building tools that let software agents use wallets and stablecoins without constant human oversight, and Paradigm's own portfolio already sits on both sides of that shift, in blockchain infrastructure and in the AI agents that run on top of it.

A similar shift is visible across other large Silicon Valley venture funds, which have gradually blurred the line between crypto and AI theses in their portfolios. For crypto investors, that carries one message: large funds no longer treat blockchain and AI as separate bets, and they're hunting for teams that can work across both fields at once. Paradigm's portfolio already spans Hyperliquid and Ethereum tools like Foundry and Reth built for the Ethereum network. The firm is betting the two technologies will keep advancing together rather than on separate tracks, and chose to bake that bet into the new fund's structure rather than leave it a side effect of individual deals.