Crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm has raised a $1.2 billion fund, its third venture vehicle and fourth fund overall, to invest in what founder Matt Huang described on Wednesday as the "technical frontier". Crucially, the firm is broadening its remit beyond its cryptocurrency roots to include robotics and artificial intelligence, reflecting the surging interest in AI while the crypto sector has faced a more difficult period.

Paradigm says it is not abandoning crypto, pledging in a blog post by Huang and managing partner Alana Palmedo to keep investing in the reinvention of markets and the financial system, alongside tools such as Foundry, Reth, Centaur and the OpenAI security collaboration EVMbench. The new fund has already backed drone delivery firm Zipline and space startup True Anomaly. Founded in 2018 by Huang, a former Sequoia partner, and Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, the firm filed to raise the fund earlier this year; the final $1.2 billion is slightly below the $1.5 billion it had reportedly targeted in February.