Andreesson Horowitz (a16z), Silicon Valley’s leading global venture capital (VC), has set up its first base in Seoul to target the Asian market.

A16z announced on the 15th that it has officially opened its Seoul office to help its portfolio companies enter the Korean and Asian markets. Earlier, a16z finally selected Seoul as its core base after officially announcing its plan to enter Asia in December last year.

Co-founded by Mark Andriesen and Ben Horowitz in 2009, a16z is a venture capital of Silicon Valley that rolls about $100 billion (about 150 trillion won) in operating assets.

a16z highly appreciated Korea’s outstanding global competitiveness in various industries such as artificial intelligence (AI), manufacturing, defense, crypto, content, and consumer goods.

The high market acceptance of new technologies along with excellent technical talent was also the main background for selecting Korea as a strategic location in Asia.

The a16z Korean office is planning to focus on the “crypto (virtual asset, blockchain)” field in the initial stage of advancement. a16z Crypto launched its 5th dedicated fund worth $2.2 billion last month, raising its cumulative managed assets to $9.8 billion (about 13.3 trillion won), and is aggressively preoccupying the web3 infrastructure ecosystem.

In the future, the Korean office is planning to gradually expand its activities to all industries, starting with the crypto ecosystem.

The Seoul office will be led by Park Sung-mo, general manager of the Asia-Pacific region (GTM) of the a16z Crypto, who was appointed in December last year.

Park will help a16z portfolio companies successfully settle in the market based on their abundant working experience accumulated by Naver and the Monad Foundation. In particular, it plans to focus on business development, partnership establishment, and ecosystem connection based on a high understanding of domestic networks and markets.

a16z has the capital and experience to discover and list numerous global innovative companies such as SpaceX, Instagram, Facebook, Airbnb, and Coinbase in the early stages.

Beyond simple fund investment, it is famous for operating an all-round support network through specialized organizations such as recruiting talent, business development, policy cooperation, and partner network construction.

Through this, it plans to contribute to the development of the Korean startup ecosystem and actively seek opportunities to create synergy between its portfolio companies and domestic companies.

“a16z is focused on supporting portfolio companies’ growth and market entry beyond simple investments,” said Park Sung-mo, general manager. “We will actively pursue portfolio companies’ entry into Korean and Asian markets based on our Seoul office.”