Crypto Ventures will prioritize quantum-ready infrastructure in 2027, Moon Pursuit founder said

Utkas Ahuja, founder of Chasing the Moon Capital, said that with global venture capital reaching US$227.4 billion in the second quarter, cryptocurrency venture investors will prioritize quantum-ready infrastructure by 2027.

Summary

In the second quarter of 2026, global venture capital reached US$227.4 billion in 8440 transactions. Ahuja expects post-quantum security and blockchain migration tools to attract more capital. Chasing Moon Capital, together with SAVA and 0G Labs, led American Fortress's $8 million seed round. The National Institute of Standards and Technology and major blockchain developers have begun to prepare for quantum-resistant systems.

KPMG's latest "Venture Capital Pulse" report found that global venture capital recorded the second-highest quarterly total in the second quarter, although most of the money went to large companies engaged in artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies. Venture-backed companies raised $227.4 billion in 8440 deals, down from a record $332.9 billion in the first quarter. OpenAI's $122 billion funding boosted the total in the first quarter, while Anthropic's $65 billion funding was the largest contributor in the second quarter.

U.S. companies received US$144.9 billion in 3644 deals, accounting for nearly 64% of global investment. Other major U.S. deals include a $12 billion financing from artificial intelligence modeling company Project Prometheus and a $5 billion financing from defense technology company Anduril Industries.

KPMG pointed out that in the field of quantum computing, the pace of investment has slowed down compared with pace's record set in 2025, but it remains active. QuantWare of the Netherlands raised $178 million, Germany's eleQtron received $66 million, and Quantinuum raised $1.6 billion through a Nasdaq listing, valuing the company at $17.6 billion.

Cryptocurrency VCs may fund quantum preparedness before threats arrive

Ahuja told Cryptocurrency News that investors need to consider quantum risk before computers capable of cracking current blockchain security come out. "I think quantum will force cryptocurrency investors to think longer than ever before," Ahuja said.

According to Ahuja, no one can currently reliably predict when quantum hardware will be able to crack the encryption technology used to protect digital assets. However, he believes the uncertain timetable will not eliminate the case for investment, as upgrading blockchain, wallets and user infrastructure can take years. "If it can take years to upgrade a blockchain, transfer billions of dollars in assets, change wallet infrastructure, and coordinate users on a decentralized network, then quantum readiness will become important before the technology reaches that threshold."

Ahuja expects the issue to drive more venture capital into post-quantum security, cryptographic migration and infrastructure designed to accept future security upgrades. He mentioned that when evaluating companies, Moon-Chasing Capital will examine how easily its products can adapt to changes in encryption requirements. Under this approach, resilience depends in part on whether a network or security provider can move users and assets to the new system without causing massive disruption. This migration effort can be particularly important for public blockchains, because developers cannot order every wallet owner, custodian, and verifier to upgrade at the same time.

AmericanFortress provides actual migration bets for Moon-Chasing Capital

Moon-Chasing Capital, together with SAVA Digital Assets Fund and 0G Labs, led American Fortress's $8 million seed round financing. The company has developed a proposed security system for existing blockchain wallets and applied for a patent covering anti-quantum transaction signatures.

Ahuja said the investment was based in part on the compatibility of the product plan with the existing infrastructure of the encrypted network. "We are interested in the practicality of migration and the fact that the technology is designed to work with existing infrastructure," he said.

American Fortress has proposed a system called ZK-PoSP that allows wallets to prove control without exposing the original seed. As Cryptocurrency News previously reported, the proposed quantum secure wallet solution will cover addresses on Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana without the need for holders to transfer funds or rotate keys. The design is still a proposal that requires upgrades at the node level before the blockchain can be enforced. American Fortress's technical paper also describes subsequent quantum protection as speculative rather than proven to withstand actual quantum attacks.

Ahuja said that the apparent simplicity of the migration process may conceal the complexity of the underlying work. He added that Moon Chasing Capital considered the company's intellectual property and patent development when assessing whether its technology could be easily replicated. Ahuja said that rather than betting on a specific date for a quantum major breakthrough, venture capital firms should determine whether a company is solving a problem that is already creating commercial need. Security, encryption and infrastructure provide potential markets, but companies still need an adoption plan that does not rely entirely on rapid progress in quantum hardware. "It will become increasingly important to distinguish scientific progress from investable business models."

Selective crypto financing favors products with existing demand

According to Galaxy Research, venture capital firms invested approximately $4 billion in 355 cryptocurrency and blockchain transactions in the first quarter of 2026. Financing volume fell by 50% from the previous quarter, and the number of transactions fell by 16%, mainly due to a decrease in large-scale financing later in the quarter. Trading, exchanges, investment and lending companies raised approximately $2.6 billion, accounting for nearly three-fifths of the quarterly total. Infrastructure ranked second in terms of number of transactions, with 56 transactions, while privacy and security companies completed 22 transactions.

Funding for venture capital companies focused on cryptocurrencies remains difficult. According to Galaxy Research, eight new funds raised approximately $1.1 billion in the first quarter, the lowest quarterly number of funds since the third quarter of 2020. The research firm said artificial intelligence, spot cryptocurrency exchange-traded products and digital asset finance companies are also vying for institutional allocation. U.S. startups received 70.2% of all cryptocurrency risk capital and accounted for 43.5% of completed transactions during the quarter. Galaxy Research also found that the median cryptocurrency investment exceeded $4.5 million, although it warned that available valuation data only covered 12% of transactions and was biased towards late-stage companies.

For Ahuja, as cryptocurrency companies use technologies developed in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum research, investment categories that were once treated separately are beginning to overlap. "For years, we have regarded digital assets, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum as fairly separate investment categories, but now some of the most interesting opportunities are emerging between them," he said. Ahuja believes agreements and applications will continue to receive funding, although he expects more capital to flow to the basic systems needed by organizations to securely use digital assets. He added that quantum protection falls into this category because companies can sell preparation and migration tools before quantum hardware reaches the level needed to attack blockchain.

The U.S. Standards and Blockchain Project has begun preparations

The National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized its first three post-quantum cryptography standards in August 2024. The agency encourages system administrators to start adopting these standards immediately rather than waiting for quantum computers that can crack current encryption to emerge. The agency's timetable calls for the abandonment of algorithms that are vulnerable to quantum attacks by 2030 and removal from standards by 2035, with high-risk systems expected to act earlier. The deadline applies to federal encryption standards and does not impose direct upgrade requirements on decentralized blockchain networks.

Institutional Bitcoin companies have also invested money in this issue. In July, Strategy, BlackRock, Coinbase and six other companies created a Bitcoin Security Alliance, whose members pledged a total of $15 million in donations over three years. Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets and Galaxy joined the group. Members will choose which developers, researchers and organizations receive their funding, and the alliance will not direct Bitcoin development or support specific protocol changes.

Ethereum developers have taken a different route through web research and testing. Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said on August 13 that the first layer of future design for Ethereum will move away from the Poseidon hash function and use established functions such as SHA-2 or BLAKE2s. This change in the Ethereum roadmap comes after the proof system has made progress that makes traditional hash functions more practical for zero-knowledge technologies. A production version of leanVM is scheduled to be launched in 2027, followed by protocol deployment planned in 2028.

At the escrow level, BitGo and Silence Laboratories completed a post-quantum signature test in May using BitGo's institutional platform and Silence Laboratories's multi-party computing system. The simulation used ML-DSA, a digital signature algorithm included in the agency's FIPS 204 standard, while retaining distributed key control, policy checking, and independent responsibilities for cross-agency teams.