Crypto VC Paradigm Expands into AI, Robotics with $1.5B Fund (WSJ)

Paradigm, the San Francisco-based crypto investment firm, is pursuing a new $1.5 billion fund aimed at backing companies across artificial intelligence, robotics and other frontier technologies. The fundraising plan, reported by the Wall Street Journal, signals the firm’s intention to broaden its mandate while continuing to back crypto-related ventures using its established technical-investment team. Public filings show Paradigm already manages roughly $12.7 billion in assets, underscoring the scale it brings to a fund that blends crypto with cutting-edge tech bets. The strategy reflects a broader industry twist: the convergence of digital assets with AI and automation, a nexus that has attracted increased capital over the past year.

Paradigm will continue to invest in crypto companies, according to familiar sources, but the new vehicle will also evaluate frontier-tech opportunities outside the traditional crypto ecosystem. The Wall Street Journal noted that the firm’s managers sought greater latitude to avoid constraints that could cause them to pass on attractive deals. The approach mirrors a broader trend among crypto-focused funds expanding into adjacent technologies as capital markets prize diversification and cross-disciplinary expertise. The fundraise aligns with Paradigm’s history: it launched its flagship $2.5 billion fund in November 2021, at the time the largest crypto fund in history, and in 2024 publicly announced its third fund—a venture vehicle of about $850 million focused on early-stage crypto projects. These milestones punctuate a firm comfortable with large-scale vehicles and multi-cycle exposure to digital assets.

Beyond capital allocations, Paradigm’s strategy underscores a belief that crypto and AI are not mutually exclusive. The firm’s leadership has argued for a pragmatic view of the two domains, noting substantial overlap in areas such as how autonomous systems can execute transactions. This concept—agentic or autonomous AI agents performing actions within financial networks—has become a focal point in industry conversations about security, efficiency and governance. For readers familiar with the technical dialogue around AI agents and how they interact with decentralized systems, the connection is a natural extension of Paradigm’s investment thesis. The discussion sits at the intersection of risk management, smart-contract integrity and the evolving architecture of programmable money.

Open questions about the precise structure of the new fund remain, but the narrative around Paradigm’s pivot away from crypto appears to have evolved. In 2023, the firm faced public speculation after it trimmed crypto-specific language from its website, prompting some observers to wonder if it planned a broader shift toward AI. Co-founder Matt Huang disputed that interpretation, stating that the team had simply been exploring AI while remaining deeply committed to crypto across all stages. In a subsequent note, Huang emphasized that developments in AI are compelling enough to merit parallel exploration alongside ongoing crypto initiatives. This stance captures a pragmatic view in which crypto remains central, but AI opportunities are too consequential to ignore. The firm’s recent collaboration with OpenAI to release EVMbench—a benchmark evaluating how AI models can detect and patch security vulnerabilities in smart contracts—illustrates that the overlap between the two sectors is not theoretical, but operational and testable.

Paradigm’s frontier-tech push comes amid a broader AI funding boom

Industry data cited by the OECD shows venture-capital investments in artificial intelligence reached $258.7 billion in 2025, accounting for about 61% of all VC activity and effectively doubling AI’s share since 2022. Within AI, fundraising for generative AI firms made up roughly 14% of total AI VC investments, with the United States drawing the largest portion of capital. The numbers illustrate a market backdrop where AI is a driving force behind liquidity and deal flow, a context that investors like Paradigm are trying to leverage while maintaining a crypto footprint. The momentum around AI funding complements the evolving crypto landscape, where innovations in on-chain security, scalable infrastructure and tokenized financial assets continue to attract capital from traditional and specialized investors alike.

For readers tracking the practical side of AI-crypto convergence, Paradigm’s activities provide a useful case study. The firm’s involvement in AI benchmarking and security—through collaborative efforts with OpenAI on EVMbench—signals a preference for concrete, talent-driven assessments of risk and opportunity in crypto infrastructure. The project evaluates how AI agents can identify vulnerabilities in smart contracts and suggest patches, a capability that could improve the resilience of programmable money and decentralized applications. This line of work aligns with a broader push to raise the bar on cryptographic and governance standards as AI adoption scales across blockchain-native ecosystems.

In parallel, the market continues to size up the potential for frontier-tech finance to reshape venture ecosystems. The integration of AI with crypto workflows hints at new value propositions for developers, operators and investors who want to combine the speed and automation of intelligent agents with the structural transparency of decentralized networks. The 2025 funding landscape, highlighted by OECD figures, reinforces the idea that technology bets are increasingly pluralistic—funds seek to back teams that can navigate both AI breakthroughs and crypto-market dynamics, a stance Paradigm appears to be formalizing through its latest fundraising efforts.

Why it matters

The strategic timing of Paradigm’s fundraising matters for several reasons. First, it demonstrates how crypto-focused funds are maturing into multi-technology platforms capable of supporting complex portfolios that straddle AI, robotics and digital assets. This evolution could attract a broader set of LPs seeking diversified exposure to frontier tech themes without sacrificing deep domain expertise in crypto risk management. Second, the collaboration with AI researchers and benchmarks like EVMbench signals a willingness to invest not only in companies but in tooling and standards that improve security and efficiency across the crypto stack. If AI-driven testing and patching become mainstream in on-chain development, the resulting improvements in smart-contract safety could raise the confidence of users and institutions alike.

From a market perspective, Paradigm’s move sits at the nexus of two transformative trends. AI funding is surging, while crypto funding cycles remain active as investors wager on improvements in scalability, governance and regulatory clarity. The OECD data cited above illustrate a capital environment where AI is a dominant driver of VC flows, yet the crypto sector still presents material opportunities for those who can blend deep technical risk assessment with strategic portfolio construction. The cross-pollination of these domains could fertilize ecosystems where AI helps automate, audit and optimize crypto infrastructure, while blockchain technologies provide new data-native workloads for intelligent agents and automation platforms.

For the broader user and investor community, Paradigm’s approach signals that the near-term future of crypto funding may increasingly resemble traditional technology venture models: larger raised funds, diversified mandate, and a portfolio approach that prioritizes talent, rigorous due diligence and technical interoperability. The firm’s willingness to maintain its crypto commitments while pursuing frontier tech investments could set a template for other crypto-focused funds confronting the same balance: remaining anchored in digital assets while embracing adjacent advances that could reshape the entire technology stack.

What to watch next

• Progress toward closing the $1.5 billion frontier-tech fund, including potential fundraising milestones and any anticipated close dates.
• Regulatory filings and disclosures related to the new vehicle, especially as the strategy expands beyond crypto into AI and robotics.
• Portfolio visibility: any announcements of investments or co-investments in AI, robotics or related frontier technologies, alongside crypto companies.
• Updates on EVMbench adoption and results, and whether AI-driven security tooling becomes a standard in crypto development workflows.
• Continued commentary from Paradigm leadership on the crypto-AI overlap and strategic priorities across stages of investment.

Sources & verification

• Wall Street Journal report detailing Paradigm’s $1.5 billion frontier-tech fund and the firm’s expansion into AI and robotics.
• Regulatory filings showing Paradigm’s assets under management at roughly $12.7 billion.
• Cointelegraph coverage discussing Paradigm’s ongoing crypto investments and references to executive commentary.
• Announcement of EVMbench, a joint effort with OpenAI to benchmark AI agents’ ability to detect and patch smart-contract flaws.
• OECD data on AI venture-capital investments through 2025, highlighting the scale of AI funding and cross-sector allocations.

Paradigm widens the lens on frontier tech and crypto

Paradigm’s current fundraising push to assemble a $1.5 billion frontier-tech fund underscores a practical shift in how crypto-focused capital views the technology landscape. While the firm remains firmly rooted in crypto, the new vehicle signals a deliberate strategy to diversify into AI, robotics and other high-potential sectors. At the same time, Paradigm’s public record—$12.7 billion in AUM and a history of large crypto funds—offers a credible backdrop for investors weighing the risks and rewards of a broader tech mandate. The collaboration with OpenAI on EVMbench exemplifies the concrete, value-driven work that can emerge when crypto publics intersect with AI researchers and standards bodies. As the sector contends with regulatory questions and evolving market dynamics, Paradigm’s approach provides a lens into how crypto-focused firms may evolve to participate in the broader tech economy while maintaining a disciplined risk profile.

This article was originally published as Crypto VC Paradigm Expands into AI, Robotics with $1.5B Fund (WSJ) on Crypto Breaking News – your trusted source for crypto news, Bitcoin news, and blockchain updates.