Paradigm, a venture firm best known for its crypto investments, on Wednesday unveiled a $1.2 billion fourth fund and signaled a broad expansion into artificial intelligence, robotics and other technology frontiers.
The firm, which started in 2018 investing "first in crypto," will keep backing crypto while moving "across AI, robotics, and other frontiers," according to a blog post announcing the fund. Portfolio names it cited include drone-delivery startup Zipline, orbital-defense firm True Anomaly and Nous Research, an open-source AI lab known for its development of the Hermes agent framework.
The raise marks yet another crypto-heavy VC shop tilting toward AI, echoing moves by rivals such as Andreessen Horowitz. DeAI News has reported on the trend, including fellow crypto investor Katie Haun's plans for a roughly $1 billion fund focused on the "agentic economy."
Paradigm framed the strategy as staying "close to the metal," researching and building alongside founders.
"To invest at the frontier, you have to live on it," according to the blog post, authored by managing partners Matt Huang and Alana Pamedo. They added that the firm continues to fund crypto projects such as the Hyperliquid exchange and Tempo, a blockchain developed under the auspices of the payments firm Stripe. (Huang is a former CEO of Tempo.)
The announcement did not disclose the fund's limited partners or an investment timeline.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The first draft of this story was written on Claude Desktop using a custom skill designed to handle press-release rewrites. I then used Distro Publisher, our MCP server, to file a draft directly to DeAI News, and then used the DistroVerse editing interface to make some edits, and I personally checked all the facts prior to publication. I created the story illustration on Claude Desktop using a custom skill.)