Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is reportedly negotiating a raise of up to $850 million for a new fund.
Paradigm is discussing with investors to raise between $750 million to $850 million as crypto markets have come back over the past months, Bloomberg reported on April 3, citing people familiar with the matter.
A $750 million raise would be the largest for crypto since May 2022, when Silicon Valley-based VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) raised a record-setting $4.5 billion.
If Paradigm completes the raise, it would be its largest since it raised a $2.5 billion fund in November 2021 at the peak of the last cycle’s bull run — which was the largest cryptocurrency fund ever at the time.
In September, The Information reported Paradigm was aiming to raise a $1 billion fund.
Paradigm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some of Paradigm’s most notable Web3-related investments include Coinbase, Fireblocks, Blast, Optimism, Uniswap, Gitcoin and friend.tech.
Paradigm recently tipped Merkle Manufactory — the firm behind the decentralized social network Farcaster — into unicorn status as its valuation surpassed the $1 billion mark in a Paradigm-led funding round.
Paradigm also invested $278 million in the now-collapsed FTX. It wrote its investment down to zero just four days after Sam Bankman-Fried’s exchange filed for bankruptcy.
Paradigm founder and managing partner Matt Huang said the firm felt “deep regret” for investing in a company that did “enormous damage to the ecosystem.”
Huang said FTX only constituted “a small part” of Paradigm’s total assets, however.
Related: Crypto VC funding surged 53% in March, Optimism wins largest share
VC fundraising for crypto projects sunk ta low of $445 million in October 2023 — the lowest monthly figure since December 2020, according to RootData.
However, the last three months have recorded consecutive monthly increases, with March seeing $1.16 billion, according to RootData.
The infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi) sectors received the most funding in 2024 at $1.14 billion and $459 million, respectively.
Nonfungible token (NFT)-related VC funding last year was $281.3 million, a 92% drop from the $3.4 billion in 2022.
The VC funding drop is in tandem with floor prices of major NFT collections also to falling. The two largest NFT projects by market cap, CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club, saw their respective floor prices fall around 63% and 90% from highs back in October 2021 and May 2022, according to NFT Price Floor.
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