Coinbase Ventures Sets Sights on Real-World Assets, DeFi, and AI for Investment

Coinbase Ventures Pivots Towards Real-World Assets, DeFi, and AI

Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital arm of leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, has announced a strategic refocusing of its investment efforts for the upcoming year. The firm will be concentrating on three key areas: real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, decentralized finance (DeFi), and artificial intelligence (AI).

According to a recent blog post, Coinbase Ventures is actively seeking to invest in teams working on asset tokenization, specialized exchanges and advanced trading terminals, next-generation DeFi protocols, and advancements in agentic AI.

"These are the categories where we believe the next big breakout companies and protocols will emerge, and where we’re looking to actively invest," the firm stated, highlighting their conviction in the growth potential of these sectors.

A Track Record of Investment

Since its inception in 2018, Coinbase Ventures has made a significant impact in the crypto space, with 618 investments and a portfolio of 422 startups, as reported by PitchBook. Their most recent investment was in DeFi compliance platform 0xbow on November 18th. Prior to that, they invested in payment infrastructure firms Zynk and ZAR, as well as prediction markets platform Kalshi in October.

Future Outlook and Predictions

Kinji Steimetz of Coinbase Ventures shared his insights on X, anticipating the emergence of new avenues for exposure to real-world assets, particularly through perpetual futures contracts. He noted that these contracts would “create synthetic exposure to offchain assets.”

He also emphasized the growing importance of “prop-AMMs” – proprietary automated market makers – which represent a novel exchange design aimed at protecting liquidity providers from exploitation by sophisticated traders and bots.

Furthermore, Coinbase Ventures investor Jonathan King predicted the rise of prediction market aggregators, envisioning them as the “dominant interface layer consolidating $600 million in fragmented liquidity and providing a unified view of real-time event odds across venues.”

Next-Generation DeFi Innovations

Ethan Oak, also an investor at Coinbase Ventures, highlighted the potential of integrating perpetual futures exchanges with other DeFi protocols, such as lending. This integration, he believes, would enable traders to earn yields on collateral while maintaining leveraged positions, unlocking new levels of capital efficiency.

Oak also anticipates growth in onchain privacy-preserving tools, observing a “surge of developer energy” focused on privacy-centric assets like Zcash (ZEC).

King further envisions DeFi protocols that blend onchain reputation with offchain data to facilitate unsecured borrowing at scale. “The market opportunity is massive,” he stated.

“The US alone has $1.3 trillion in revolving, unsecured credit lines that crypto can capture through superior capital efficiency and global accessibility.”

AI, DePIN, and Proof-of-Humanity Growth

Coinbase Ventures also identified key areas of growth in the AI sector. Steimetz pointed out the existing gap in training robotic and embodied AI systems, where “available data sets are still limited and fragmented.”

Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) could provide a viable framework for scaling the collection of high-quality physical interaction data for robotics.

Hoolie Tejwani, Head of Coinbase Ventures, believes that “proof of humanity” solutions, which combine biometrics, cryptographic signing, and open standards to verify human versus AI-generated content, will become a significant growth area in 2026.

Finally, the firm predicts the emergence of AI agent tooling that will empower non-technical founders to launch onchain businesses rapidly. “2026 might see AI agents further democratize onchain building,” said King, adding that these agents would be capable of handling smart contract code generation, security audits, and continuous monitoring.