a16z Crypto to Lead $300M Raise for Digital Asset at $2B

a16z Crypto is set to lead a roughly $300 million financing of Digital Asset Holdings at an implied valuation near $2 billion, according to people familiar with the plans. The deal could close in the coming weeks and would fund the firm behind the Canton Network.

The final amount could change before the round closes. Representatives for Digital Asset and a16z did not respond to requests for comment.

Digital Asset raised $135 million in June 2025 in a round led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, with participation from Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities and the DTCC. It raised an additional $50 million in December 2025 from BNY Mellon, Nasdaq, S&P Global and iCapital.

The Canton Network is a public, permissionless Layer 1 blockchain built for institutional finance. Canton offers configurable protocol-level privacy and confidentiality features and runs applications written in the open-source smart contract language Daml. The network is designed to enable multi-party tokenized asset workflows while keeping transaction details private.

Canton has attracted institutional participation. Visa joined the network as a Super Validator in March and later added Canton to a stablecoin settlement pilot in late April. The network has processed or issued more than $6 trillion in tokenized assets.

In November, a Nasdaq-listed company rebranded as Canton Strategic Holdings and raised $540 million to build a Canton Coin treasury with backing from DRW, ARK Invest and Kraken. Earlier this year, a project called Zenith completed atomic swaps between Canton and an EVM-compatible environment, creating a technical path to connect Canton with the broader Ethereum developer ecosystem.

For a16z Crypto, the investment would follow the firm's recent close of a $2.2 billion crypto fund, bringing its total dedicated crypto capital to roughly $10 billion across five funds. The firm has highlighted privacy as a key differentiator for blockchains and argued stronger confidentiality features are needed to move more finance onchain.

Quarterly venture investments in crypto have fallen year over year, according to industry data, and some established crypto investors have shifted attention and capital toward artificial intelligence and robotics.

Digital Asset's investor base includes trading firms and Wall Street banks such as DRW Holdings and Citadel Securities. If completed, the planned financing would add to the company's reported capital from prior rounds.