Greylock Closes New $1B Fund To Invest In Earliest-Stage Startups

Venture capital may have slowed, but that doesn’t mean some VC firms aren’t still raising big.

Greylock — famous for bets on companies such as Airbnb, Coinbase and then-Facebook, now Meta — announced its 17th fund, a $1 billion vehicle focused on pre-seed, seed and Series A founders.

The firm will look to fund AI-first companies across a variety of areas, including cybersecurity, fintech, consumer and more. In a blog post, the firm said more than 80% of the investments made in its previous fund were pre-seed, seed or Series A.

“We expect that every company will become an AI company,” the blog reads. “While it’s been exciting to watch as the venture community has embraced AI as a thesis area over the last year, Greylock has been committed to AI investing for a decade and this commitment continues into Fund 17.”

Simultaneously, Greylock also announced a new program called Greylock Edge, a three-month company-building program for pre-idea, pre-seed and seed founders that also will include some type of “flexible” funding.

Greylock announced its 16th fund in September 2020, which also totaled $1 billion. Some of its recently announced investments include Frec, PayJoy and Upwind Security.

Big money across the pond

That wasn’t the only news of a large new fund on Tuesday. London-based Atomico has raised $1.1 billion of new funding to invest in startups even as Europe also has seen a decline in venture capital funding, the Financial Times reported. The firm is raising the cash for its new venture and growth funds, with a goal of $1.35 billion for both funds, per the report.

The investor’s noteworthy investments include buy-now-pay-later Klarna and electric flying car startup Lilium.

Atomico last announced a fund in February 2020 — an $820 million vehicle — per Crunchbase data.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias