Andreessen Horowitz, the California based VC firm has today put an end to all rumors surrounding its upcoming funding round, by confirming that it has secured $1.5 billion in capital commitments from previous investors. The firm will thus continue to invest in seed, early-stage and mid-stage tech companies.
This is the firm’s fifth funding round and follows in the footsteps of the fourth, where-in the current funding is consistent with the previous multi-stage venture capital fund. Andreessen Horowitz has now raised an impressive sum total of $6.2 billion in these five stages.
The firm has raised the current funds in a short span of just two years, and is excited for the opportunities that the upcoming technologies, including VR, Artificial Intelligence and core enterprise infrastructure, among many others will present to them.
Dubbing the latest funding round as ‘Fund V‘ — the partners will aggressively continue to invest under the broad theme of ‘software is eating the world’. Software is disrupting lives and will continue to. We’re now seeing a shift where the non-tech companies are also trying to embrace technology by acquiring and investing in tech and software startups.
Scott Kupor, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz sat down with TechCrunch editor, Connie Loizos to discuss what’s in-store for the firm’s future and if there has been a change in how the firm now tackles fresh investments.
Kupor adds that, a16z has been a part of many innovations from a very early stage and invested small seed funds of about $50k into the idea, but we’re now pivoting our approach and taking a broader outlook at investing more into fewer products. So, most of the firm deals now range from $500,000 to $1.5 million making us a major investor in the idea, rather than just a mere pawn. The company then becomes an elite part of the Andreesson Horowitz family.
Kupor further adds that there is no change in the investment mandate of the firm,
We’ll still do multistage investing in software companies, with about 70 percent of our bets going into early-stage stuff and the rest going into later-stage stuff.
But he also clarifies that if there are great opportunities or the later-stage investment becomes attractive, then the partners would definitely step-in to be a part of that company.
The VC firm is also making a move into the bio-tech industry and has setup a new $200 million fund called the AH Bio Fund, last November. These funds will be used to make early-stage investments into startups treading along the lines of ‘computer sciences and life sciences’.
Andreessen Horowitz is venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and has been a marquee investor in some key tech giants of Silicon Valley. The firm has invested in some major companies like Skype(sold to Microsoft for $8.5 billion), social media giants like Facebook and Twitter(before their respective IPO’s), Oculus, Bebop, Boosted Boards and much more.
Now, the principal take-away from this funding round of the eminent Andreessen Horowitz is that, will the VC firm step foot in India and invest in some tech startups, that are creating valuable products for the customers, and banking upon the upcoming boom in the hand-held device era. With key investments from foreign investors like Peter Thiel(the founder of Founder’s Fund) into the Indian taxation startup, ClearTax and other VC firms like Romulus Capital — are positive about the upcoming prospects of the Indian startup ecosystem.
