Global venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has raised more than $9 billion across six new funds, marking the largest fundraising in the firm’s 25-year history and one of the biggest venture capital hauls of the year. Lightspeed said the capital was secured across vehicles spanning early-stage, growth and late-stage investments,
According to the firm, the fundraising includes $980 million for Venture Partners Fund XV-A, $1.2 billion for Venture Partners Fund XV-B, $1.8 billion for Lightspeed Select VI, and $3.3 billion for Opportunity Fund III. In addition, Lightspeed raised $600 million through a co-investment vehicle and secured $1.25 billion in single-asset commitments during the year.
Following the raise, Lightspeed said it now manages more than $40 billion in assets globally. The firm said its opportunity fund will be used primarily to support follow-on investments in its portfolio companies.
For those who need a refresher, Lightspeed has increasingly positioned itself as a leading investor in the rapidly-increasing AI sector, a focus it says has driven both capital deployment and fundraising momentum. “AI is the most transformative technology shift in a generation, and Lightspeed has been investing behind this conviction for years,” said Ravi Mhatre, founder and partner at the firm, in a statement.
Since 2012, Lightspeed said it has invested over $5.5 billion across 165 AI-focused companies, including Anthropic, Databricks, Mistral, Glean, Rubrik, Netskope and Navan. The firm has also backed companies such as xAI, Abridge and Skild AI.
The scale of the new funds allows Lightspeed to continue making large, capital-intensive bets. The firm was a co-lead investor in Anthropic’s $13 billion funding round last year and reportedly committed about $1 billion to the AI company.
“This is the strongest and most strategic fundraise in Lightspeed’s history,” Bejul Somaia, Partner and Leader at Lightspeed, announced in the official statement. “We’re executing against a future that looks very different from the past, and is informed by first-principles thinking, not an adherence to convention. Investing in the intelligence economy requires a high degree of strategic coordination, not a loosely coordinated collection of individual efforts.”
The fundraising comes at a time when many venture firms are struggling to generate liquidity, with IPO activity remaining limited across technology markets. Lightspeed has stood out as an early investor in Rubrik, Netskope and Navan, all of which have recently gone public, providing rare exits in an otherwise constrained market.
This points to a continued concentration of capital within a small group of large venture firms, as institutional investors pull back from broad experimentation and place larger bets with managers seen as lower risk. After weak distributions from the 2021 cycle, limited partners are prioritizing scale, liquidity prospects, and the ability to support companies through multiple funding stages.
For the AI sector, the fundraise reinforces how capital requirements are reshaping market structure. Training models, securing compute, and funding long development cycles demand funding levels that few firms can supply. Large VC funds are increasingly positioned as long-duration financiers rather than early-stage specialists. This may speed commercialization for well-funded AI companies.
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