Katie Haun has raised $1 billion for two new venture funds at Haun Ventures, split evenly between early and later-stage vehicles to be deployed over the next two to three years. The capital will go into crypto and blockchain companies, but the thesis has expanded into AI agents and financial infrastructure.
Overview
Haun Ventures is not pivoting to become a general-purpose AI fund. The firm is targeting startups that build AI agents and infrastructure for financial services — specifically, the regulated plumbing that autonomous software will need to move money. Haun told Bloomberg: "We want to do AI that is in our lane." The lane is financial services.
What the thesis covers
The fund is looking at companies developing AI agents that help consumers and businesses access financial products at any time, eliminating constraints like deadlines for wiring money. The focus is not on foundation models or the broad application layer, but on the intersection where autonomous software meets regulated finance.
Haun Ventures has already started deploying behind this thesis. It is one of the largest investors in Erebor, a digital bank founded by Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey and backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Erebor received FDIC deposit insurance approval in late 2025 and raised $350 million at a $4.35 billion valuation. It is designed to serve technology companies working with digital assets, artificial intelligence, defence, and manufacturing.
The infrastructure landscape
Major payments companies are building rails for AI agents. Stripe launched a machine payments preview integrating stablecoin settlement for agent-to-agent transactions. Mastercard launched its Agent Pay programme. PayPal and Google announced a joint Agent Payments Protocol. Visa is developing tokenisation infrastructure for autonomous purchasing. The common thread: every major payments company has concluded that AI agents will need their own financial rails.
Track record
Haun's credibility rests on returns from her first fund. Headline exits include Stripe's $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge (Haun Ventures invested at a $100 million valuation) and Mastercard's $1.8 billion acquisition of BVNK (Haun Ventures invested at a $678 million valuation). Both validated the thesis that stablecoin infrastructure would become essential financial plumbing, and that acquirers would be incumbent payments companies.
Not all bets worked. Haun Ventures invested in OpenSea at a $13.3 billion valuation; a top investor later marked the company down to $1.4 billion. However, the firm also bought distressed crypto assets at discounts during the FTX-era downturn and sold them at peak prices in 2025, returning capital to limited partners.
Competitive landscape
Haun is not alone. Paradigm raised $1.5 billion in February for a fund