Paradigm Raises $1.2B Fund For AI, Robotics And Crypto

Paradigm has raised a new $1.2 billion fund to invest beyond crypto, widening its mandate into artificial intelligence, robotics and other frontier technologies.

The crypto-focused venture firm had previously targeted as much as $1.5 billion for the vehicle. The smaller close still gives Paradigm one of the larger new funds in venture at a time when AI infrastructure, robotics, crypto payments and autonomous software are drawing heavier capital from investors that previously stayed inside narrower sector mandates.

Paradigm’s own positioning has already shifted. The firm now describes itself as a frontier technology investment firmthat builds and invests across crypto, AI, robotics and other new markets, while still keeping blockchain infrastructure inside its core strategy.

Crypto Mandate Expands Into AI And Robotics

The new fund marks a broader strategy change for one of crypto’s best-known venture firms. Paradigm built its brand around early-stage crypto investments, infrastructure research, open-source software and protocol-level technical work, but the latest fund gives it room to back companies that may not issue tokens or build directly on public blockchains.

AI and robotics create a larger investment field than crypto alone, especially as autonomous agents, model infrastructure, machine payments, hardware automation and security tools begin to overlap with digital-asset rails. Paradigm’s earlier work with OpenAI on EVMbench, an evaluation framework for smart-contract security agents, shows how its crypto engineering stack can be applied to AI systems that detect, patch and exploit blockchain vulnerabilities.

The shift also gives Paradigm more flexibility in a market where pure crypto venture has become harder to scale. Large token rounds remain available, but the biggest private-market check sizes are increasingly tied to AI labs, compute infrastructure, robotics platforms and agentic software.

Agentic Payments Link The Two Markets

The crypto-AI overlap is already moving from thesis to product. Coinbase’s x402 protocol processed 160 million agentic payments over the past year, showing that AI agents are beginning to use stablecoin rails for machine-to-machine transactions.

Other crypto firms are also building around the same interface shift. OKX launched an AI marketplace for agents to hire, work and pay onchain, while Coinbase for Agents added a route for AI assistants to connect to user accounts, trade crypto and prepare for x402-powered payments.

Paradigm’s fund lands while AI-market risk is becoming harder to separate from crypto-market risk. A draft U.S. Treasury report warned that an AI bust could hit stocks, banks and credit markets, while crypto traders have started tracking AI capex, private valuations and liquidity pressure as macro inputs for Bitcoin and broader risk assets.