Benchmark Capital, the storied Silicon Valley VC company acknowledged for early investments in eBay, Snap, Uber, and Twitter, is breaking with one amongst its signature traditions: conserving its funds to about $425 million and backing utterly younger startups. After more than 20 years of limiting its autos to that quantity or lower, the outfit has closed on commitments of $2 billion during two unique funds, including a $1.25 billion car devoted to later-stage investments, primarily based on The Wall Avenue Journal.
Whereas the fund sizes of many venture capital corporations comprise ballooned into billions of dollars over the final decade, Benchmark stuck to the strategy that helped create it legendary. By being staunchly selective and taking a tall — in most cases 20% — stake in every startup the company backed, it maintained a model designed to maximize outsized returns for its restricted companions.
Benchmark’s barely small fund sizes comprise likely steer clear off the company from investing in capital-intensive AI startups, namely basis model makers, whose round sizes in overall reach into hundreds of millions. Consequently, the company hasn’t invested in Anthropic, OpenAI, or any of the assorted capital-intensive AI labs, reminiscent of Periodic Labs, Reflection AI, or Recursive Superintelligence.
Soundless, Benchmark has positioned plenty of AI bets. The company final yr led a $75 million round in Manus, a Singapore-primarily based AI agent platform that hit $100 million in annual routine income inside of eight months of launching. Meta agreed to worth Manus for roughly $2 billion unhurried final yr. Chinese regulators — arguing the firm, which became founded in China earlier than relocating to Singapore, had violated export administration laws — blocked the deal in April. Meta then all but again paid Benchmark, and Benchmark disbursed proceeds from the transaction to its restricted companions.
Benchmark also backed venture customer-provider agent platform Sierra and factual AI workspace Legora at inception; led the Assortment A rounds for AI hiring marketplace Mercor and Fireworks, a swiftly-inference platform for open source models; and participated within the Assortment B round for AI code editor Cursor.
In fresh months, Benchmark has backed two assorted Assortment B startups: Gumloop, a platform that lets in enterprises to originate AI brokers without writing code, and Monaco, an AI-native gross sales and CRM platform.
Benchmark’s unique $750 million early-stage fund will give the company more flexibility to write checks in an atmosphere where early-stage valuations comprise skyrocketed. Whereas the company has historically backed corporations at the Assortment A stage, Benchmark has currently given itself more flexibility to invest in corporations at assorted early stages of construction.
Benchmark normal partner Everett Randle beforehand steered TechCrunch that the company appears to be to attain a “meaningful and deep relationship with the entrepreneurs, and that will presumably happen barely early within the firm’s lifecycle, at seed, [Series] A, at [Series] B.”
The company dipped its toe into unhurried-stage investing when it raised a $225 million particular cause car (SPV) to participate in a $1 billion pre-IPO round for Cerebras, as TechCrunch reported earlier. Benchmark first led the chipmaker’s Assortment A in 2016. Cerebras held its IPO final month, returning Benchmark $3.25 billion at the IPO keep.
That windfall resulted in the company to carry a devoted progress fund. That unique car will create 5 to 6 tall investments in both modern portfolio corporations and unique startups, primarily based on a person wakeful of Benchmark’s strategy.
The two unique funds aren’t the utterly adjustments at Benchmark. Over the final two years, the company has passed thru a well-known shift in its normal companions.
In 2024, Miles Grimshaw left the company to rejoin Thrive Capital. Then, final yr, Sarah Tavel — Benchmark’s first and utterly female normal partner to this level — took on the much less-fervent feature of venture partner, while Victor Lazarte departed to open his comprise VC company.
To fill up its ranks, Benchmark — which historically runs with four to 6 normal companions — added two unique high-profile consumers to its team: Randle, poached from Kleiner Perkins, and Jack Altman, the brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The strikes suggest that even Benchmark, lengthy outlined by its resistance to progress, now sees the AI generation as requiring a extraordinary playbook — more capital, more stages, and unique blood at the partner table.
Correction: Attributable to an editing error, this piece originally said that Benchmark’s investment in Manus remained in limbo. The story has been updated.
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Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Sooner than joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her occupation, Marina became a monetary analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation.
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