The firm co-founded by Coinbase's Fred Ehrsam is betting that artificial intelligence and robotics are too intertwined with crypto to ignore.
Paradigm, the crypto-native venture capital firm with roughly $12.7 billion in assets under management, just closed a $1.2 billion fund dedicated to artificial intelligence and robotics.
What Paradigm is actually buying #
The fund has already deployed capital into two non-crypto companies. Zipline International, an autonomous drone-delivery service, carries a $7.6 billion valuation as of January 2026. True Anomaly, a space-defense startup, was valued at $2.2 billion in April 2026.
Managing partner Alana Palmedo framed the expansion as a natural evolution rather than a pivot. The firm sees autonomous agents and AI-powered payment systems as deeply connected to the crypto infrastructure it already funds.
The fundraising track record #
The firm, co-founded in 2018 by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia partner Matt Huang, closed a record-breaking $2.5 billion crypto-focused fund in late 2021. The firm followed up with an $850 million early-stage crypto vehicle in 2024. By April 2025, Paradigm’s total assets under management sat at approximately $12.7 billion.
Paradigm quietly rebranded itself in 2023, shifting its public identity from a “crypto-focused” firm to a “research-driven technology” investor. The move drew mixed reactions at the time.
What this means for crypto investors #
Palmedo explicitly stated that the crypto commitment remains intact. The firm still has billions allocated to digital asset ventures.
Multiple crypto-native funds have been diversifying into AI over the past 18 months. Paradigm’s $1.2 billion commitment is the largest and most explicit version of this trend.
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