Benchmark is raising its first-ever growth fund as part of a $2 billion capital raise

Benchmark Capital, the popular Silicon Valley venture capital firm known for its early investments in eBay, Snap, Uber and Twitter, is breaking with one of its signature traditions: keeping its money at around $425 million and backing only young startups. After more than two decades of restricting its vehicles to that amount or less, the firm has made $2 billion in commitments across two new funds, including a $1.25 billion vehicle designated for later-stage investments, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While fund sizes at many venture capital firms have swelled to billions of dollars over the past decade, Benchmark is committed to the strategy that helped make them legendary. By being highly selective and taking a significant stake — typically 20% — in every startup the company backs, it has maintained a model designed to maximize huge returns for its limited partners.

However, Benchmark’s relatively small fund sizes have likely prevented the firm from investing in capital-intensive AI startups, especially core model makers, whose round sizes often run into the hundreds of millions. As a result, the company has not invested in Anthropic, OpenAI, or any of the other capital-intensive AI labs, such as Periodic Labs, Reflection AI, or Recursive Superintelligence.

Benchmark’s new $750 million early-stage fund will provide the company with more flexibility to write checks in an environment where early-stage valuations have skyrocketed. While the company has traditionally backed companies at the Series A stage, Benchmark has recently given itself more flexibility to invest in companies at other early stages of development.

In recent months, Benchmark has backed two Series B startups: Gumloop, a platform that allows organizations to create AI agents without writing code, and Monaco, a native AI-driven sales and CRM platform.

Benchmark general partner Everett Randle previously told TechCrunch that the company is looking to build a “meaningful and deep relationship with entrepreneurs, and that can happen relatively early in the company’s life cycle, at the seed stage, [Series] A, at [Series] for.”

The company entered late-stage investment when it raised $225 million as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to participate in Cerebras’ $1 billion pre-IPO round, as TechCrunch previously reported. Benchmark led the chipmaker’s Series A for the first time in 2016. Cerebras held its initial public offering last month, with Benchmark returning $3.25 billion at the IPO price.

This windfall has prompted the company to raise a dedicated growth fund. This new vehicle will make five to six large investments in both existing portfolio companies and new startups, according to a person familiar with Benchmark’s strategy.

The two new funds aren’t the only changes at Benchmark. Over the past two years, the company has seen a significant shift in its general partners.

In 2024, Miles Grimshaw left the company to rejoin Thrive Capital. Then, last year, Sarah Tavel — Benchmark’s first and only general partner to date — took on the less involved role of venture partner, while Victor Lazzarte left to start his own venture capital firm.

To replenish its ranks, Benchmark — which traditionally works with four to six general partners — has added two new high-profile investors to its team: Randle, acquired from Kleiner Perkins, and Jack Altman, brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. These moves suggest that even Benchmark, long known for its resistance to growth, now sees the AI ​​era as requiring a different playbook — more capital, more stages, and new blood at the partner table.