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Vaunted Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) announced the closing of a new $525 million fund known as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers XV, LLC (KPCB 15).
The new venture capital fund focuses on investments in early-stage digital consumer and enterprise, green tech and life sciences companies.
The fund will be led by 10 managing members, including Mike Abbott, Chi-Hua Chien, Amol Deshpande, John Doerr, Bing Gordon, Wen Hsieh, Randy Komisar, Matt Murphy, Beth Seidenberg and Ted Schlein.
Portfolio companies in KPCB 15 will benefit from the firms holistic approach to company building that we pioneered more than a decade ago, said Ted Schlein, partner at KPCB, in a statement. We will identify promising early-stage companies in our areas of focus and bring value-added resources in key areas to help early-stage companies grow and succeed. This includes applying our considerable industry, operational and financial expertise and network of relationships to help entrepreneurs build lasting enterprises.
Since its founding in 1972, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has backed entrepreneurs in more than 500 ventures including AOL, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Sun, Symantec, Verisign, webMD and Zynga.
KPCBs recent early-stage investments include Zynga, RPX, Flipboard, One Kings Lane, Path, Puppet Labs, Nebula, Nest, Aquion Energy, Auxogyn and Foundation Medicine, in addition to many others across its focus areas of digital, green tech and life sciences. While KPCB has invested in the digital enterprise space for decades, a further emphasis will be made in KPCB 15.
In a press release on the new fund, KPCB said it continues to actively invest from its existing funds across both early and growth-stage companies. These include KPCBs $1 billion Digital Growth Fund (DGF) dedicated to later-stage growth companies; iFund, a $200 million investment initiative focused on the revolutionary mobile Internet device opportunity; sFund, the $250 million initiative focused on companies and services that will reinvent the Web through a social experience; and KPCBs $1 billion Green Growth Fund (GGF).
By providing portfolio companies support in recruitment and talent management, building strategic relationships, as well as expertise in operations, marketing and communications, KPCB furthers the growth and success of its portfolio companies. Portfolio companies will also benefit from recently added key hires to the partnership that bring deep expertise in mobile, social and cloud, including Mike Abbott, Bing Gordon and Mary Meeker, KPCB said.
KPCB portfolio companies employ more than 350,000 people worldwide. More than 150 of the firms portfolio companies have gone public, and many other KPCB ventures have achieved success through mergers and acquisitions. KPCB focuses its global investments in three practice areasdigital, green tech and life sciencesand provides entrepreneurs with company-building expertise out of its offices in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Shanghai.