a16z Leads Investment in AI Lab: Why Is Capital Continually Flowing into the AI + Crypto Sector?

Top Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm a16z predicts in its “2026 Big Vision” series report that AI is evolving from “digital assistants” into “autonomous execution clusters,” while cryptocurrencies will become the foundational settlement layer of the internet. This signals the emergence of a new economy driven by intelligent agents and blockchain technology working together.

As nearly $49.75 billion in venture capital floods into the blockchain space in 2025, with the AI × Crypto track securing over $3.5 billion in funding—accounting for 7.1% of total investments—the industry is asking: what forces are driving this convergence, and how will it reshape future value flows and computational networks?

Capital Trends: Major Players and Funding Flows Reveal Industry Shifts

Goldman Sachs recently disclosed a cryptocurrency asset portfolio valued at $2.36 billion. This is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2025, the entire crypto venture market experienced explosive growth, with total funding reaching $49.75 billion—up 433% from 2024.

While the number of deals remained relatively stable, the average deal size increased significantly, indicating that risk investors are becoming more selective, concentrating larger sums on fewer top-tier projects.

In the capital allocation landscape, the intersection of AI and crypto has become an unavoidable focus. This sector attracted over $3.5 billion, representing 7.1% of annual funding, with a clear upward trend. Investments are primarily directed toward decentralized computing, AI agents, and blockchain infrastructure projects.

Driving Forces: Technological Evolution and Demand Shifts Fuel Sector Convergence

Y Combinator, a renowned Silicon Valley startup incubator, highlighted new directions in AI development in its Spring 2026 startup guide: “AI has moved beyond accelerating existing workflows and is now reconstructing entire systems.” This reconstruction is happening not only in digital domains but also extending into traditional sectors like finance, government, industry, and energy.

a16z further elaborates on the deep logic behind technological integration: “Technology is spilling out of screens; ‘bits’ are beginning to fully take over ‘atoms’.” This means the combination of AI and encryption will no longer be confined to digital spaces but will gradually permeate all levels of the physical world.

Encryption provides AI with three key elements: trustworthy incentive mechanisms, transparent data provenance, and decentralized governance frameworks. Conversely, AI offers blockchain networks intelligent decision-making, efficient data processing, and adaptive optimization mechanisms.

Key Trends: Five Frontier Areas Define the Future of the Sector

Rise of Agent-Native Infrastructure

As AI transitions from “dialogue tools” to “multi-agent systems,” traditional infrastructure faces fundamental challenges. a16z partners note that enterprise backend architectures, originally designed for “1-to-1 human-machine interactions,” cannot handle the exponential recursive tasks triggered by intelligent agents.

This has led to the demand for “Agent-Native Infrastructure,” which must support large-scale concurrency, ultra-low latency, and intelligent routing. Just as 4G catalyzed mobile internet, this infrastructure will determine the ceiling for AI application deployment.

From KYC to KYA: Identity Paradigm Shift

Circle co-founder Sean Neville points out that in financial services, “non-human identities” now far outnumber human employees—by a ratio of 96:1—but most of these identities are still “ghosts,” unable to open accounts or bear responsibility.

a16z research suggests that overcoming this bottleneck requires establishing a KYA (Know Your Agent) framework. Just as humans need credit scores to access loans, AI agents will need verifiable cryptographic credentials to link their delegators, behaviors, and responsibilities.

Building Machine-Native Financial Networks

With the rapid development of autonomous robots, investment in physical AI continues to grow. However, there is a lack of unified communication and collaboration layers among different manufacturers and models. This highlights the need for open, cross-device operational layers.

Web3 technology can fill this gap through on-chain identities, smart contract registries, and immutable logs, providing interoperability foundations for robots. More importantly, robots require a “machine-native” financial system to pay for electricity, data, and computing power—something traditional finance cannot provide.

Table: Key Investment Trends and Representative Cases in AI + Crypto Track

Future Outlook: Full Integration of Bits and Atoms

A key shift in 2026 will be the full takeover of “atoms” by “bits.” a16z predicts the rise of an “electronic industrial stack,” integrating electrification, materials science, and AI advancements, enabling software to truly control the physical world.

AI agents will leverage blockchain-supported nano-payment systems to automatically distribute value to content contributors upon task completion. This real-time, usage-based compensation could resolve current issues where AI bypasses original revenue sources when extracting content from networks.

With stablecoin trading volumes reaching a record high—estimated at $46 trillion in 2025—they are rapidly approaching the scale of the US ACH system. This indicates stablecoins are transforming from mere financial instruments into the foundational settlement layer of the internet.

Five Frontline Forces Reshaping Value and Computational Flows

Gate Ventures’ 2026 outlook identifies five major forces reshaping global value, compute, and intelligence flows:

• The rise of on-chain real-time information aggregation layers
• Decentralized payment and FX settlement networks replacing traditional banks
• The emergence of “machine-native” financial systems
• The evolution of institutional DeFi into “meta-yield” integrated platforms
• The transition of crypto miners into providers of distributed AI compute and energy infrastructure

As the industry moves toward 2026, the true leaders will be those teams building products at these critical intersections, where blockchain demonstrates structural advantages in liquidity, compute, collaboration, and settlement.

Summary

AI agents are learning to develop “spatial awareness” and understand the physical laws of three-dimensional worlds; blockchain networks are evolving from simple value ledgers into trust and collaboration protocols among machines.

Crypto farms are transforming into high-performance computing centers for the AI era—once energy consumers, now providers of compute power.

On leading exchanges like Gate, trading pairs fluctuate in real time. As a16z foresees, with the end of the screen era, the way value and intelligence flow is being fundamentally redefined.