Sources say Founders Fund is close to closing $6 billion on its latest growth fund

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is close to closing its fourth growth fund, Founders Fund Growth IV, with $6 billion in capital commitments, according to sources close to the firm. As is the case with most of the company’s fundraising operations, demand from outside investors exceeds the fund’s capacity, according to those sources. In addition, about $1.5 billion of capital comes from Founders Fund partners, one source told TechCrunch.

The new fundraising comes less than a year after Founders Fund closed its third Growth Fund, a $4.6 billion vehicle primarily dedicated to follow-on investments in its successful late-stage companies.

The 21-year-old company has an impressive portfolio of winning startups. Founders Fund was an early investor in AI cloud computing company Crusoe, workforce management platform Rippling, and fintech companies Stripe and Ramp.

The company was also the first institutional investor in data analytics giant Palantir Technologies, and holds stakes in several other defense technology companies, including SpaceX, Flock Safety, and Anduril, which was co-founded by Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens and which the company backed from its seed round. (Nine-year-old Anduril is currently reportedly raising a massive $4 billion round at a $60 billion valuation.)

Founders Fund’s growth capital ambitions are not limited to its current portfolio alone.

Last month, for example, the San Francisco-based company made its first direct investment in Anthropic. The Founders Fund, along with DE Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, ICONIQ and MGX, co-led a $30 billion investment in the leading AI lab at a post-money valuation of $380 billion. This investment makes Founders Fund one of the few companies to own significant stakes in both leading AI labs – and it is also an investor in OpenAI.

Although Founders Fund has been aggressively raising growth capital, the company has not raised a new early-stage fund since early 2022, when it announced its eighth early-stage fund with $1.8 billion in capital commitments.

In 2023, the company halved this financing to $900 million in response to deteriorating conditions. The Founders Fund reallocated the remaining $900 million to a separate early-stage fund that was officially launched last October, according to a regulatory filing.

The Founders Fund declined to comment.