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According to Fortune magazine, in the context of a downturn in the crypto market in 2025 and the distribution of profits to investors, the portfolio values of crypto venture capital firms such as Paradigm and a16z crypto have significantly shrunk.According to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the total assets under management (AUM) of four crypto funds under a16z crypto dropped nearly 40% from 2024 to 2025, falling to $9.5 billion. Part of the reason is that the firm began returning capital to investors from earlier funds, and the timing of the returns coincided with the market peak in 2025, with a net DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) of 5.4 for its first crypto fund.Multicoin Capital's AUM has more than halved, dropping to about $2.7 billion. Paradigm's holdings also slightly decreased by about 6%. Meanwhile, the total size of a16z crypto's parent company, Andreessen Horowitz, has exceeded $100 billion.The report points out that the shrinkage in assets under management reflects the decline in portfolio value due to the market downturn, and is also a sign of normal exits by VCs and the return of funds to limited partners (LPs). Some firms, such as Haun Ventures, have seen their AUM grow by over 30%, reaching around $2.5 billion.Currently, Paradigm is seeking to raise a new fund of $1.5 billion, and a16z crypto is also raising up to $2 billion for its fifth fund.

On-chain lending platform Votre announced the completion of a $3.75 million seed round financing, led by a16z's crypto startup accelerator a16z CSX, with participation from MaC Venture Capital and a group of angel investors.The company currently operates a non-custodial cryptocurrency lending platform based on the Base Layer 2 network, helping cryptocurrency holders obtain liquidity without having to sell their assets. The new funds will be used to expand Votre's technological infrastructure and enhance the functionality of its lending platform.

Artificial intelligence startup Hilbert has completed a $28 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.Hilbert aims to help businesses automate decision-making that drives commercial growth, thereby changing the current situation where companies invest heavily in artificial intelligence but may not see returns.

The AI model evaluation platform Yupp.ai's CEO Pankaj Gupta posted on the X platform stating that the platform will soon cease operations, and access will be maintained for the next 15 days, during which users can download their data. Existing users will not be able to create new conversations starting today, and new users will also be unable to register.Yupp.ai launched in June 2025 and raised $33 million in seed funding last June, led by a16z. The platform allows users to compare various AI models for free; users can input prompts and view responses generated by multiple AIs in parallel. After selecting the best result, a "preference data package" is formed, which is used for the post-training and evaluation of AI models. The platform combines blockchain technology to achieve transparency in the evaluation process, allowing users to provide feedback in exchange for corresponding rewards, while AI developers obtain verifiable training data.

According to Fortune, former a16z crypto investor Sam Broner announced the co-founding of The Better Money Company with his college friend Adam Zuckerman, completing a $10 million seed round financing, led by a16z crypto, with participation from BoxGroup and Sunflower Capital, along with angel investors such as Circle co-founder Sean Neville and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst.The company aims to establish a stablecoin clearinghouse, providing customers with low-cost services to exchange different dollar-pegged tokens. Broner previously worked at a16z crypto for over two years, focusing on investments in the stablecoin sector. Zuckerman worked at Latham & Watkins law firm before serving as General Counsel at Eigen Labs.The two founded the company last November and have already secured commitments from several issuers, including Paxos, Bridge under Stripe, and MoonPay, planning to support all tokens that comply with the signed and effective Genius Act, excluding USDT, while its U.S. version USAT is unaffected. The product has not yet been publicly launched and is expected to be open to customers in the coming weeks.

Guy Wuollet, a partner at a16z crypto, stated in Fortune's Crypto Playbook that the crypto industry is maturing and is currently in the "shirt era," not yet fully formalized but having moved beyond the early stages. He pointed out that the dominant trend in the current crypto industry is Wall Street's rapid adoption of blockchain, with traditional financial giants like BlackRock and Fidelity not only offering Bitcoin ETFs but also embracing blockchain technology in the areas of stablecoins and tokenized stocks.Wuollet also noted that the integration of blockchain and AI is laying the groundwork for on-chain agency commerce. He mentioned that a large number of talents from the consumer AI sector are entering the crypto industry because they believe that the first agency payments will occur on-chain, and Stripe also discussed agency payments in its annual letter. Regarding the issue of fragmentation that different payment standards might cause, Wuollet believes that AI models are good at understanding different systems, so this is unlikely to slow down the adoption rate.

According to TechCrunch, Y Combinator-incubated startup Glimpse announced the completion of a $35 million Series A funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from 8VC and Y Combinator.Glimpse focuses on helping retail brands automate the financial deduction process, using AI technology to identify invalid deductions and automatically submit disputes, assisting brands in recovering potential lost funds. The company previously engaged in Airbnb product display services and completed its transformation in 2024, raising a total of $52 million in funding, and currently serves over 200 retail brands, including clients such as Suave and ChapStick.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), posted on X that the combination of OpenClaw and Pi is one of the top ten software breakthroughs of all time.It is reported that Pi (full name Pi Coding Agent) is a minimalist AI coding agent developed by Mario Zechner (@badlogicgames) at the end of 2025, and it is the core "kernel" of OpenClaw. It provides only four tools for LLM (language learners) — reading, writing, editing, and bash — along with a concise prompt for iteratively building, running, and fixing code autonomously. There are no bloated features.Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw, retweeted the post.

According to Bloomberg, the venture capital firm General Catalyst is in discussions with investors about a new fundraising plan, aiming for approximately $10 billion.Insiders say that the funds are intended to be allocated to multiple investment vehicles, including early-stage venture capital funds and growth funds. Negotiations are still in the early stages, and the final fundraising amount may still be adjusted.General Catalyst has previously invested in several cryptocurrency and blockchain companies. In recent years, the firm has been gradually expanding from traditional venture capital models to a broader financial platform and increasing investments in areas such as financial services. If this round of fundraising is completed, General Catalyst's capital strength will be significantly enhanced, and it is expected to compete with a16z, further solidifying its position among large venture capital firms in the United States.

a16z partner Noah Levine posted on the X platform, stating that a previous Bloomberg article cited data from x402.org claiming that AI agents completed $24 million in payments within 30 days, but Allium Labs data shows that the actual transaction volume for AI agents during the same period was about $3 million, and after excluding wash trading, it was approximately $1.6 million.Levine noted that current AI payment activities are mainly concentrated in the developer tools sector, including web scraping platform Firecrawl, AI browser Browserbase, and AI image platform Freepik. Companies like Stripe, Cloudflare, and Vercel have integrated the payment standard x402 developed by Coinbase, and Google has also embedded this system into its agent payment protocol. Levine stated that the $1.6 million transaction volume is not large, but the scale of the infrastructure built around it is considerable, as these companies are betting on the market prospects after AI agents become the default buyers.Additionally, Coinbase announced that its x402 Facilitator has added support for Polygon, allowing developers to accept USDC payments on Polygon, Base, and Solana. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that the transaction volume of AI agents will soon surpass that of humans.

According to Menlo Times, AI infrastructure company Nexthop AI announced the completion of a $500 million oversubscribed Series B funding round, with the company's valuation rising to approximately $4.2 billion. Investors in this round include a16z, Lightspeed, Altimeter Capital, Battery Ventures, Emergent Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, U.S. Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), and WestBridge Capital.The company stated that the funds will be used to accelerate the construction of efficient AI network infrastructure and to launch three foundational network platforms, with the team size now exceeding 300 people.

a16z partner Andrew Chen pointed out that AI code generation will fundamentally replace spreadsheets—spreadsheets are essentially "business logic trapped in a grid," lacking version control, testing, and modularity.AI code generation will compress the marginal cost from "spreadsheets" to "software" to nearly zero, and approximately 1 billion spreadsheet users worldwide are expected to migrate to real software applications.

After completing the TGE, Opinion's ecological construction continues to accelerate. Beyond the main site of Opinion.Trade, the number of trading terminals integrated with Opinion is steadily increasing. The prediction market trading terminal project Kairos recently announced that its backend has officially connected to the Opinion order book and has launched Early Access (invite-only testing). Kairos has received investment from the renowned venture capital firm a16z crypto, focusing on creating high-performance trading terminals for the prediction market.As an important part of the Opinion ecosystem, Kairos's terminal functionality will further enrich the trading experience and distribution channels of the Opinion ecosystem.