As many top venture firms continue to raise large sums of money, Greylock Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's oldest and most prestigious venture firms, is purposely bucking the trend toward inflated funding.
On Tuesday, the 61-year-old company announced it had raised its 18th fund of $1.5 billion. This figure is 50% higher than its previous $1 billion plan from 2023 and roughly matches the capital the company has raised across its seed and flagship funds during the pandemic. Still, Greylock partner Saam Motamedi told TechCrunch that Greylock could have easily raised a “multiple” of that number, suggesting that the company decided that holding back on partnerships was the better path to take as industry-wide funding continues to rise.
“Our mission is to be the most important partner for the most important entrepreneurs,” Motamedi said. The firm takes pride in introducing its portfolio companies to top engineers and potential customers, as it did with Baseten, an AI infrastructure startup now valued at $13 billion after its first Series A investment in 2022. But Motamedi said Greylock could only provide that level of support by keeping the number of companies it supports small.
The firm's 10 partners only make one or two new investments each year, and Motamedi says that at this rate, the fund will have about 25 portfolio companies.
Like its predecessor, the new fund will primarily focus on incubating companies from early stages and leading seed and Series A rounds. This is where Greylock's reputation was established. The company has a strong track record of building companies from the ground up, most notably security giant Palo Alto Networks, which it launched inside Greylock's offices 21 years ago, and email security startup Abnormal, which Greylock founded in 2018 and was last valued at $5.1 billion.
Still, Greylock isn't strictly sticking to early-stage deals. Motamedi said he would also support late-stage companies with high potential, even if they “missed it early.” The firm's 17th fund included investments in three growth stages: Anthropic, Revolut, and Wiz.
The company made its first investment in Anthropic when the AI company raised Series F at a valuation of $183 billion. “This is the largest investment in the company's history,” Motamedi said.
Motamedi estimates that about 15% of new funds will be invested in later-stage startups, but insists that Greylock will primarily remain an early-stage investor.
As evidence, Motamedi said that when the partners meet every Monday to consider the investment pipeline, the agenda consists primarily of people's names rather than company names.
“We get to know people before we start a company. It really depends on the person,” he says. “In many cases, the company doesn't even exist.”
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