After the 2021 bubble surge in VC investment failed to yield significant returns from many venture firms, limited partners such as endowments, pension plans, and sovereign wealth funds began funneling the bulk of their capital into a select group of established companies with proven track records.
The latest big chunk of capital has flowed into Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 25-year-old venture company announced Monday that it has raised $9 billion in new funding, its largest funding in its history.
At a time when few companies have successfully IPOed, Lightspeed was an early investor in Rubrik, Netskope, and Navan, all of which recently made their public market debuts.
The company has also positioned itself as an investor primarily focused on AI. Lightspeed claims to power 165 AI-native companies, including Anthropic, xAI, Databricks, Mistral, Glean, Abridge, and Skild AI.
Armed with a huge new fund, the company can continue to make large investments in capital-intensive AI companies. For example, Lightspeed reportedly wrote a $1 billion check to Anthropic in September when it co-led the LLM maker's $13 billion investment.
Lightspeed's new capital is spread across six funds, including a $3.3 billion opportunity fund focused on follow-on investments in high-growth portfolio companies.
Other big VC firms that have recently raised large pools of capital include Founders Fund, which raised $4.6 billion for a growth fund earlier this year. General Catalyst will have capital of $8 billion and Andreessen Horowitz will have capital of $7.2 billion, both to be secured in 2024.
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Meanwhile, younger, smaller VC firms are struggling to attract new capital. 2025 is on pace to record the lowest number of VC fund closures in the past decade, according to PitchBook data.