Billionaire co-founder of crypto venture capital firm a16z Marc Andreessen may be leaving the board of directors of Meta due to his firm’s investments in the Web3 space.
Business Insider reported on Friday that a close source said, “it would not surprise me even remotely” if Andreessen exited the board in the next few months. Andreessen could leave as soon as May when the board has its next re-election.
Andreessen has not made a public statement regarding his future with the Meta board.
Meta has begun to build or acquire several Web3 projects related to the Metaverse, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), social networking, finance and entertainment, meaning that a16z’s crypto empire could create a conflict of interests. On March 18, Meta applied to patent user identification software most commonly used in hardware and e-wallets similar to MetaMask or Ledger.
A16z, meanwhile, is the leading VC firm in the cryptocurrency space. It helped lead the recent investment round in Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs and launched a $30 million fund on March 11 to support NFT art projects. The $450 million investment round in Yuga Labs marks one of the largest NFT project seed rounds ever.
A16z’s other previous or active investments in the crypto space include decentralized exchange Uniswap, centralized exchange Coinbase, NFT marketplace OpenSea, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol MakerDAO and decentralized lending platform Compound.
Andreessen has been on Facebook’s former board of directors since 2008, longer than any current non-Meta team member. Peter Thiel, an early Facebook investor, will step down in May for a number of reasons, including his crypto investments in Block.one (the blockchain solutions company behind EOS) and crypto trading platform BitPanda.