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Foundation Capitalhas come a foresighted fashion since it was force to scale down its fund sizing from $ 750 million in 2008 to$282 million ( its sixth main fund)in 2013 .
On Tuesday , the 30 - year - one-time firm announced that it raised a $ 600 million 11th flagship fund , which is 20 % larger than the predecessor$500 million fundit closed about three years ago .
innovation credits its revival with sticking to its knit : seed - level investing .
“ Most firms that have been around for 30 year have typically perish multi - leg , multi - geography , multi - strategy . We instead have stayed very focussed on the former degree , ” general collaborator Steve Vassallo told TechCrunch .
introduction is the first institutional investor in over 70 % of its portfolio companies .
“ We look for what I call ‘ $ 0 billion ’ food market in go-ahead , AI , fintech and crypto , ” Vassallo said . “ These are markets that do n’t even exist until founders will them into being . ”
He explained that when Cerebras launch in 2016 , from Foundation Capital ’s spot , the AI microprocessor chip market was virtually nonexistent . “ At that sentence , AI workload were minuscule , ” Vassallo explained , adding that Nvidia ’s GPUs were used in the main by gamers and graphic designers .
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Since then , Cerebras has grown into a company valued at $ 4.25 billion . The company filed a public S-1 last fall butpostponed its IPOprimarily due to a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS ) .
Foundation Capital was also the first institutional investor in the blockchain chopine Solana .
Vassallo compared how they bet for founders to the pre - criminals in the movie Minority Report . “ We sometimes joke about identify pre - father before they ’ve even left their last job , ” he say .
Foundation claim that by creating new market , the firm ’s winning investment end up “ owning their class , ” lead to exponentially better outcomes .
Vassallo attributed the business firm ’s ability to upraise a larger fund than its predecessorin this marketto the firm ’s history of mellow cash distributions .
“ We gave approximately $ 1.4 billion back to our LP over the last three years , ” Vassallo said , adding that that amount is over three sentence what the firm called ( or bespeak ) from its investor during the stop .
Recent release that helped to drive the firm ’s Johnny Cash restitution include the sale of role player detection companyEvolutionIQ to CCC for $ 730 millionand the acquisition of cybersecurity startupVenafi by CyberArk for $ 1.5 billion .
Although Foundation is securely stick by to its early - stage strategy , it claims it require a large fund because the sizing of semen and Series A deals has grown , and the firm want to continue to own 15 % to 20 % of each party when it first invests .
But one thing about Foundation is dissimilar now . Charles Moldow , an investor who spent nigh 20 years at the unfluctuating and punt companies like LendingClub , Rappi , and Kiavi , retired last yr , leaving Foundation with four general cooperator .
