Andreessen Horowitz Leads $25M Funding Round for Crypto Lending Startup

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has led a $25 million funding round for crypto lending startup Compound.

On Nov. 14, Fortune reported that Compound, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, secured $25 million in an investment round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, with participation from other top investors including Paradigm, Bain Capital Ventures and Polychain Capital.

To integrate with crypto exchanges, custodians, wallets

Compound CEO and co-founder Robert Leshner said in an interview with Fortune that the company now has over $150 million in assets on its platform and that the fresh $25 million investment will go towards making the service more accessible to ordinary people. Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon commented on the partnership: 

“Compound is a lending protocol that is open to anyone in the world, that disintermediates banks and allows anyone to earn interest on their money [...] We’ve worked with Robert and his team for over two years and think they are world class technologists and entrepreneurs.”

The San Francisco-based startup is an automated crypto lending platform that has predominantly focussed on working with large-scale customers. However, Leshner mentioned that the company will soon start to cooperate with crypto exchanges, wallets and custodians for wider market expansion, so retail investors will also be able to use its services. 

Integration with these additional crypto platforms is planned to take place by the end of 2020. 

Andreessen Horowitz invests in Arweave

At the beginning of November, Arweave, a blockchain startup focused on permanent online data storage, attracted $5 million in another investment round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, with the participation of Union Square Ventures and Multicoin Capital.