Lightspeed raises record $9 billion in fresh capital | TechCrunch

After a wave of venture capital investment from the 2021 bubble failed to deliver strong returns at many VC firms, limited partners such as endowments, pension plans and sovereign wealth funds began injecting capital. larger share of their capital in a select group of established companies with a proven track record.

The latest massive capital flight has come to Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 25-year-old venture capital firm announced on Monday that it had raised a total of € $9 billion of new funds, the largest fundraising in the company’s history.

At a time when very few companies have managed to go public, Lightspeed was an early investor in Rubrik, Netskope and Navan, all of which recently made their public market debuts.

The company has also positioned itself as a predominantly AI-focused investor. Lightspeed claims to have backed 165 AI-native companies, including Anthropic, xAI, Databricks, Mistral, Glean, Abridge, and Skild AI.

Armed with its massive new fund, the company can continue to make huge investments in capital-intensive AI companies. Lightspeed, for example, reportedly wrote a $1 billion check to Anthropic when it co-led the LLM maker’s $13 billion investment in September.

Lightspeed’s new capital is spread across six funds, including a $3.3 billion opportunity fund dedicated to follow-on investments in the fastest-growing portfolio companies.

Other major venture capital firms that have recently raised huge pools of capital include the Founders Fund, which raised $4.6 billion for a growth fund earlier this year; General Catalyst’s $8 billion capital flight and Andreessen Horowitz’s $7.2 billion, both secured in 2024.

Meanwhile, younger and smaller venture capital firms are struggling to raise new funds. According to data from PitchBook, 2025 is on track to record the fewest venture capital fund closures in the past decade.