Variant raises $222 million for new fund with a thesis of AI, crypto and ‘autonomy’

Venture capitalist Jesse Walden made his name as a crypto investor—a job he says will disappear before the decade is out. “In four years, being a crypto investor will be like being an ‘Internet investor’,” says Walden, who started his investing career at Andreessen Horowitz before founding his own crypto-focused firm, Variant, in 2020. This looming disappearance of crypto as a stand-alone investment category has not, however, prevented Walden from raising $222 million for Variant 4, a new fund dedicated to investing in companies at the earliest possible stage and supporting them as they grow. In an interview with Fortune, Walden explained he stands by the crypto themes that defined Variant’s first three funds, but that he has widened the firm’s thesis to account for recent developments in the industry, and the fast-changing world of AI. That original thesis revolved around how blockchain technology can permit people to own and control more of the online world without relying on centralized platforms like Google and Facebook—a concept that led to widespread predictions in corners of the VC industry that crypto was ushering in a new “Web 3” era of the internet. That term, however, and the ideals it promised never really materialized as consumers struggled with clunky crypto interfaces, and the tech giants remained as dominant as ever. According to Walden, the Web 3 world may not have come to pass as its proponents envisioned, but its underlying principles of decentralization did give rise to notable successes, particularly in the realm of finance. He points to the popular DeFi platforms Uniswap and Morpho, both of which figure in Variant’s investment portfolio. Walden adds that these developments have also validated the intellectual premise of decentralization, and what he describes as Variant’s refined thesis of “autonomy.”“We’re defining autonomy as this much broader tent of any appl