The new capital is set to be deployed over the next two to three years into cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, Haun said in an interview with Bloomberg News published Monday (May 4). Aside from that, she said she plans to invest in startups that meld financial services, artificial intelligence (AI) and alternative assets.
“There are deep, transformational shifts going on within technology,” she said. “One of those is AI; another one is digital assets.”
The report said her efforts are in keeping with the larger venture landscape, where investors are dealing with a volatile crypto market and strong AI demand. Haun said her firm, Haun Ventures, is still more focused on crypto and financial services than AI.
“We’re not pivoting to be an AI fund,” she said. “We want to do AI that is in our lane.”
That means looking at startups working on AI agents or infrastructure that help consumers and businesses get easier access to financial products, Haun told Bloomberg.
Along those lines, Haun has become one of the largest investors in Erebor, a digital bank recently valued at more than $4 billion.
Before Haun invested in crypto, she investigated the digital currency sector in her capacity as a federal prosecutor, and created the U.S. Justice Department’s first crypto task force.
While some venture investors have courted the Trump White House in hopes of gaining support for crypto or AI projects, Haun told Bloomberg she can’t see the benefit of publicly supporting a specific political party.
“The fact of the matter is that Chuck Schumer has sat down in my conference room, but so has the Senate banking Chair,” she said. “We work with all sides of the aisle — and I think that’s really important.”
In other digital asset-related news, PYMNTS wrote recently about the resurgence in—and evolution of—crypto payments.
“The early promise of crypto payments was a disarmingly simple one of faster, cheaper and borderless transactions,” that report said.
Merchants, however, soon found themselves in a different reality. Fragmented blockchains, volatile assets, inconsistent user experiences and nebulous settlement processes made what was supposed to be a next-generation checkout feature into an operational headache.
“But the trajectory of crypto payments looks increasingly to be aligned, and not at odds, with the broader evolution of financial infrastructure,” PYMNTS added.