Kleiner Perkins raises $750 million for new investment fund

By Katie Roof

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins said it has raised a new $750 million fund to make more growth-stage startup investments.

The Kleiner Perkins Select fund will invest in mid-stage startups in a category known as early growth. Some of the investments will be follow-on financing for Kleiner’s existing portfolio companies while others will be new.

The fund is in addition to Kleiner’s $700 million early stage fund, which is still being invested. The earlier fund focuses on seed stage to Series B rounds, while the new vehicle will cover investing through about Series D.

Several of Kleiner’s portfolio companies have gone public in recent months, including Coursera Inc., DoorDash Inc. and Airbnb Inc. Robinhood Markets Inc. and UiPath Inc. -- also Kleiner investments -- are on deck to go public.

Kleiner partner Ilya Fushman said that the strong returns for venture capital were part of what motivated the creation of the fund.

There have been “really monster outcomes in the tens of billions for companies going public,” Fushman said in an interview. “We’re consistently talking about decacorns.”

The fund will be investing across enterprise, consumer, hard tech, fintech and health care. Robotics, artificial intelligence and automation are all potential investment areas.

Kleiner previously had a fund dedicated to growth-stage investing. Mary Meeker, one of the firm’s leaders for growth-stage deals, departed with part of her team in 2018 to form a pre-IPO investment group called Bond.