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a16z's AI infrastructure team has successfully backed two acquisitions within five days: Cursor has been acquired by SpaceX, and Stripe announced the acquisition of OpenRouter. According to The Information, the total value of a16z's holdings corresponding to these two investments has exceeded $8 billion.In 2024, a16z participated in Cursor's $60 million Series A round, when the company's valuation was only $400 million. Now, SpaceX is acquiring Cursor for $60 billion. Bloomberg previously reported that a16z is Cursor's largest external shareholder, holding about 10%, which is valued at approximately $6 billion based on the acquisition price.In 2024, a16z established its first $1.25 billion infrastructure-focused fund. The Information states that the two transactions involving Cursor and OpenRouter are enough for the related fund to return all principal to LPs and also provide additional profits. This year, a16z raised another $1.7 billion for its infrastructure fund and recently raised an additional $1.1 billion specifically for AI hardware. Martin Casado, head of AI infrastructure, noted that a few years ago, only about 5% of the startup projects he encountered were in hardware, and now that figure is close to 20%.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the suspected largest HYPE holding institution of a16z continued to buy HYPE today. This institution previously spent 66.4 million USDC to purchase 816,000 HYPE at an average price of 81.3 dollars a week ago; 8 hours ago, it transferred 13.05 million USDC to Hyperliquid and purchased HYPE through a TWAP method.Currently, this institution has bought and staked 5.201 million HYPE, worth approximately 445 million dollars, with an average purchase price of about 67.2 dollars, and the current floating profit is approximately 95.18 million dollars.

AI infrastructure startup Gimlet Labs has completed a $300 million financing round, raising the company's valuation to $3 billion. This round of financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Arm Holdings and Microsoft's venture fund M12.Gimlet Labs primarily helps clients allocate AI tasks to different types of chips and is collaborating with Arm to make its software compatible with various chip technologies from Arm.

a16z Charts compiled recent data indicating that since January 2025, tech recruitment has shown a clear preference for years of experience, while the requirements for the number of skills have decreased, with a change of about 5% to 10%.The charts show that companies are lowering the weight of skill lists when screening positions, and are instead placing more emphasis on candidates' accumulated experience. This change is related to the skill gaps brought about by AI, which is rewriting the safety and employment landscape.

The venture capital firm a16z crypto published an article stating that blockchain throughput has increased more than 100 times in five years, with some production systems now capable of processing tens of thousands of transactions per second. The article indicates that throughput alone cannot explain when transactions will settle; financial markets require predictability, including guarantees or censorship resistance, as well as ordering guarantees, to ensure transactions settle on time and operate under rules that participants can understand in advance.The article claims that resilience means no single operator controls access. a16z researchers introduced the concept of Strong Chain Quality, reserving block space to allow effective transactions to enter through multiple routes. Ordering rules must be clear, such as priority fees or venue rules, to avoid MEV and achieve fair price time priority. Additionally, privacy must be achieved through cryptography before execution, hiding intent until it is included in the final transaction, allowing the market to be auditable without real-time previews of unexecuted orders.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has publicly released its request for comments regarding "Novel ETFs," which may hold crypto assets or adopt unconventional strategies. The disagreement centers on whether the filing documents should remain public before the fund begins trading and how quickly the review process should be. Crypto asset management firm Grayscale and the crypto policy organization Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) support establishing an optional confidential filing period to reduce competitors from submitting imitation documents.Charles Schwab opposes complete confidentiality and suggests that filing documents should be made public at least 75 days in advance. Grayscale requests that the SEC respond within 45 days, while CCI argues that the confidentiality process should not extend the automatic effectiveness or review period. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) supports shortening the review time but emphasizes that the rigor of the review should not be reduced; trading firm Jane Street believes that accelerating the process could lead to a decline in product quality, competitiveness, and liquidity.Currently, there are 174 ETFs related to crypto assets in the U.S., with BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) managing approximately $61 billion in assets, accounting for about 38% of the total assets of related ETFs. The SEC will decide whether to adjust the confidentiality arrangements for filings and the speed of the review.

AI-native operating system Metal, aimed at the private capital market, announced the completion of a $4.5 million seed round financing, led by a16z, Speedrun, and Y Combinator, with participation from Pioneer Fund, Rebel Fund, Gaingels, Indus Valley Capital, Team Ignite VC, Goodwater Capital, and Phaze Ventures.This round of financing will accelerate its development of software that founders can use during fundraising and continue to use throughout the capital formation process. Metal also released a paper on the trends in the private capital market.

According to Bloomberg, the stablecoin cross-border remittance startup Felix Pago announced the completion of a $200 million Series B funding round.This round of financing includes $87 million in equity financing and $113 million in credit line financing. The equity financing was co-invested by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), while the credit line financing comes from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund.Felix Pago is currently one of the most representative stablecoin remittance networks in Latin America, primarily using WhatsApp as the front-end entry point, and leveraging USDC and blockchain as the underlying settlement infrastructure, significantly reducing the cost and time for cross-border remittances from the United States to Mexico.

The venture capital firm a16z's crypto division, a16z crypto, is hiring a Head of Social Media, with a salary range of $199,000 to $232,000.This position is aimed at candidates who are extremely active online, understand crypto and internet culture, can create and deliver content, and can showcase intelligence in a non-corporate or non-awkward manner. Responsibilities cover podcasts, investments, events, editing, memes, short video editing, and social media strategy. This is a remote position, requiring some travel or attendance at offline events.

According to TechCrunch, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has expanded the size of its fifth growth fund from $6.75 billion established in January this year to $8.5 billion, adding $1.75 billion in new funds. The fund primarily invests in growth-stage startups that are expanding products, exploring new markets, and scaling businesses.This fundraising comes just days after a16z announced the completion of its $1.1 billion Machine Era Fund. This fund mainly focuses on the AI hardware sector, with investment areas including infrastructure startups in chips, storage, networking, and data storage. David George, head of a16z's growth investment team, stated that the relevant growth fund has invested in over 100 companies in the past seven years. As AI companies enter the growth stage more rapidly, their financing needs and valuations are also rising. a16z is currently focusing on areas such as enterprise and consumer AI, defense technology, robotics, software and hardware infrastructure, and medical technology.

Silicon Valley's renowned venture capital firm a16z has announced that it has raised $1.1 billion for its latest fund, the Machine Age Fund, which will focus on investing in the full suite of computing infrastructure that supports AI operations, including chips, memory, networking, storage, as well as complete systems such as data centers, robots, and home AI devices.a16z stated that over the past year, there has been a significant turning point in the growth of AI in terms of application capabilities and types of work. As AI expands from chat and reasoning further into programming and other knowledge work, the demand for computing power and tokens is experiencing exponential growth, and machine intelligence is accelerating its deep development.a16z indicated that its team possesses extensive experience in hardware, data centers, chips, networking, and large-scale computing systems. They have also established a resource network covering market expansion, talent recruitment, marketing, customers, suppliers, and American manufacturing, which will further support the next generation of AI hardware entrepreneurs. a16z mentioned that we are currently at an important juncture in the transformation of computing paradigms and look forward to collaborating with entrepreneurs dedicated to reconstructing AI hardware and advancing the arrival of the "Machine Age."

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the suspected a16z, currently the largest institution holding HYPE, bought $24 million worth of HYPE at an average price of $68.7 in June, and recently made another purchase and staked HYPE.In the past day, this institution deposited 36 million USDC into Hyperliquid through 12 addresses, of which approximately 24 million USDC has been used to buy 282,090 HYPE, with an average purchase price of about $81.5. Currently, this institution has cumulatively bought and staked 4.679 million HYPE, valued at about $381 million, with an overall holding average price of about $65.6, resulting in an unrealized profit of about $74.4 million.

On August 24, a16z's latest chart shows that the weekly active growth of OpenAI Codex in enterprises is extremely polarized. The growth rate for lawyers is as high as 108 times, followed by sales and recruitment at 41 times each, marketing at 26 times, and healthcare at 24 times, while engineers are at the bottom with only 5 times.Codex has evolved from code completion to a digital colleague capable of independently breaking down tasks and running for hours, with lawyers using it to handle vast amounts of long texts and contract comparisons. This marks the "programming" of knowledge work, with the AI explosion shifting from the tech circle to high-value white-collar positions.

According to reports from Liberty Times and other media, TSMC has completed the development and verification of the angstrom-level A16 (1.6nm) process, which is expected to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2026. This process uses TSMC's back-end power delivery network technology Super Power Rail (SPR), separating signal routing from power routing, with the power located on the back of the wafer to reduce bottlenecks.Compared to the 2nm process, the A16 is said to improve computing speed by 8% to 10%, reduce energy consumption by 15% to 20%, and increase chip density by 8% to 10%. TSMC views the 1.6nm process as a transitional step towards 1.4nm, with the goal of starting 1.4nm mass production in 2028.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, the wallet related to a16z (0xb5E...c24e) has unstaked and transferred 89,470 HYPE to Wintermute a few minutes ago, worth approximately 6.6 million dollars, possibly for sale.

a16z crypto posted on platform X that monthly spending on crypto payment cards reached approximately $759 million in July this year, an increase of about 2.5 times compared to approximately $306 million a year ago, and a significant rise from less than $1 million in October 2023, with an average transaction amount of about $86.The report states that users can hold stablecoins through custodial or self-custodial methods and spend globally using traditional card networks like Visa, with merchants settling in local fiat currencies. Currently, about 58% of spending is settled in USDC, approximately 26% in USDT, and the share of the euro stablecoin EURe has dropped from about 88% to around 2%.In terms of chain distribution, Optimism, Solana, and Base each account for over 20%, while Gnosis's share has significantly declined.

According to Business Insider, Stripe is in talks to acquire the AI model marketplace startup OpenRouter for over $8 billion.If the deal goes through, the more than 17% stake held by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) will be worth nearly $1.5 billion, while it initially invested about $20 million; Menlo Ventures holds over 6% of the stake, having invested less than $50 million, and its current value has exceeded $500 million. The total return for the two institutions is close to $2 billion.