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The first generation of AI foundation models were trained on what seemed to be an effectively unlimited resource: data. Today, the most accessible resources such as books and websites have mostly been exhausted, and data has become a limiting factor in AI progress. Much of the data that remains now is either lower quality or off-limits due to IP protections. For some of the most promising AI applications — across robotics, autonomous vehicles, and spatial intelligence — the data doesn’t even exist yet. Now these systems need entirely new types of information: multi-sensory, rich in edge cases, captured in the wild. Where will all this physical-world data come from? The challenge isn’t just technical — it’s a problem of coordination. Thousands of contributors must work together in a distributed way to source, label, and maintain the physical data that next-gen AI needs. We believe no centralized approach can efficiently orchestrate the data creation and curation that’s needed at the required level of scale and diversity. A decentralized approach can solve this. This is why we’re leading a $15M seed round in Poseidon, which is building a decentralized data layer to coordinate supply and demand for AI training data. Poseidon was incubated by Story, which we’ve also invested in. The project allows suppliers to collect the data AI companies need, while ensuring IP safety via Story’s programmable IP license. This seeks to establish a new economic foundation for the internet, where data creators get fairly compensated for helping AI companies power the next generation of intelligent systems. Poseidon’s team, led by Chief Scientist and Cofounder Sandeep Chinchali, brings deep expertise in AI infrastructure. Sandeep is a professor at UT Austin specializing in AI, robotics, and distributed systems, with a PhD from Stanford in AI and distributed systems. Head of Product and Cofounder Sarick Shah spent a decade as a machine learning engineer, scaling AI products for large enterprises across financial services, telecom, and healthcare.  We are excited to support Poseidon in its work to solve one of the most critical bottlenecks in AI development. *** The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the current or enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

We’re at the beginning of a new era in computing. AI agents are becoming more than just tools that analyze data or generate content — they’re turning into autonomous software actors. These agents can log into services, move money, hire experts, and negotiate contracts. But there’s a problem: our current financial infrastructure wasn’t built for them. Traditional payment rails assume a human is on one end of every transaction. That means delays like 3-day ACH transfers, and high fees — up to 3% — on credit card payments. Systems also flag automated activity as fraud, forcing manual reviews. This slows down innovation and limits what AI agents can actually do. Catena Labs hopes to fix this. We’re leading their seed round because they’re building what the system needs. Led by Circle cofounder Sean Neville, who helped to take the stablecoin USDC from concept to one of the world’s most widely used digital dollars, Catena is creating a new financial stack from scratch — one designed specifically for AI. Their protocol will let trusted software agents send stablecoins across the globe with near-instant finality and ultra-low fees. It combines crypto’s speed and global reach with built-in identity and compliance that enterprises demand. Sean has deep experience scaling regulated, production-grade financial systems. He’s joined by a world-class team from Meta, Google, Jump Crypto, and Protocol Labs — builders who know how to ship at scale. The core idea is simple but powerful: software agents should be able to pay and get paid, instantly and safely. Catena’s regulated, AI-native rails make that possible. We think this unlocks an entire class of applications that weren’t feasible before — things like real-time payments for AI-generated content, or agents autonomously sourcing data and services on-demand. Machine-speed systems need machine-speed money. Catena is building the missing link, and we’re excited to back them. *** The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the current or enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein.  This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

The experience of building on blockchains is often more comparable to designing hardware than writing software. Developers spend months building meticulously auditing before “taping out” a smart contract etched in stone. Upgrades demand large-scale coordination and manual migrations, leading to slow iteration cycles and minimal flexibility to swap in new components on the fly. Halliday changes that. We’re leading Halliday’s Series A round, and also led their Seed round, to back their vision for a new “software era” of web3 development. Halliday’s Workflow Protocol abstracts away the low-level plumbing—spanning multiple chains, bridges, and complex orchestrations—so developers can rapidly adapt onchain logic without redeploying contracts at every turn. This shift brings guaranteed fault tolerance to multi-hop workflows and allows entire sequences of transactions to be executed in a single call, letting developers iterate as freely as in web2 development. Halliday’s initial product, Halliday Payments, demonstrates the model in action. Its single, flexible interface links onchain commerce with any payment method—credit cards, ACH, or tokens from any chain—and automatically routes them to the right destination. No more bridging friction or manual token swaps. Users get one-click simplicity, while developers retain full freedom to evolve the underlying flows without deploying new contracts. We believe this could be one of the biggest unlocks for web3 since programmable ledgers. As we approach an internet of agents, Halliday’s Workflow Protocol provides the critical infrastructure for AI to call on web3 smart contracts with the same reliability and safety as web2 API requests. This combination of trusted execution and on-demand composability paves the way for decentralized infrastructure to keep pace with developments in AI. We first met founder Griffin Dunaif over three years ago, when he was still a junior at Stanford. We immediately recognized his incredible technical talent, and are now seeing that he’s also dogged at sales, nimble in his pursuit of the right product, and a visionary at identifying the right abstractions for users, developers, and integrators.  We’re excited to back the team as they help web3 graduate from hardware-paced development and accelerate at the pace of software. *** The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the current or enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; a16z has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.