Venture

Famed VC Firm Accel Raises $2.5B For New Funds

Accel, one of the few VC firms founded before the first dot-com bubble, filed paperwork with the SEC early Friday morning indicating it’s raised over $2.5 billion for a suite of new investment funds.

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Accel filed Form Ds for three new entities:

  • Accel XIV L.P., the firm’s fourteenth flagship venture fund, tops out at $525 million. According to the filing, 150 investors contributed capital to the fund. Identities of limited partners are not disclosed on Form D filings. This is the largest flagship venture fund Accel has raised to date; Fund XIII rounded out to $500 million, according to Crunchbase data and SEC filings.
  • Accel Leaders Fund II L.P., a follow-up to its first “Leaders”-series fund, raised $500 million. According to coverage in TechCrunch, Accel will invest this capital in follow-on rounds raised by its most successful portfolio companies, a common strategy among established venture firms. The filing shows that 167 investors backed the fund.
  • Accel Growth Fund V L.P., the firm’s fifth growth-stage venture fund, raised $1.5 billion. Accel raised this fund from 168 investors, according to the filing. With the Leaders fund allocated to follow-on investments in Accel’s best bets, we presume the Growth Fund is earmarked for de novo investments in late-stage venture. Fund size remains unchanged since Fund IV.

Accel has a strong track record of finding and backing high-growth ventures. Its biggest-ever wins include the likes of Facebook (Accel led the then-incipient social networking giant’s $12.7 million Series A at a pre-money valuation of $85.3 million) and Spotify (which Accel backed at Series D, at $900 million pre-money valuation).

More recent exits include HotelTonight, which agreed to be acquired by Airbnb earlier this month. Accel first invested in HotelTonight’s Series A round and continued follow-on funding through Series E. And next out the exit gate might be Slack, which confidentially filed its S-1 paperwork with the SEC. Accel led Slack’s $1.5 million seed round back in January 2009 and its Series A round in April 2010. The firm was a returning investor throughout several subsequent rounds.

With all this activity, there doesn’t need to be any loud marketing fanfare or press push to affirm that Accel continues to remain extremely active and engaged. The proof is in the filings and we will promise to keep watch.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

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