Why Greylock Capped Its $1.5B Fund Amid Industry’s Growth Spurt

One of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture firms, Greylock Partners, is bucking the trend of ballooning fund sizes. On Tuesday, the 61-year-old firm announced it had raised a $1.5 billion 18th fund, 50% higher than its previous $1 billion vehicle from 2023 and roughly matching the capital it raised during the pandemic. Yet Greylock partner Saam Motamedi told TechCrunch the firm could have easily raised 'a multiple' of that figure, suggesting restraint was the better path. 'Our mission is to be the most important partner to the most important entrepreneurs,' Motamedi said. The firm prides itself on connecting portfolio companies with top talent and customers, as it did for Baseten, an AI infrastructure startup now valued at $13 billion. However, Motamedi said Greylock can only offer that level of support by keeping the number of companies it backs small. With only 10 partners, the firm makes one or two new investments annually, resulting in roughly 25 portfolio companies from this fund. Like its predecessors, the new fund will focus primarily on incubating companies from the earliest stages and leading seed and Series A rounds. Greylock has a strong track record, notably launching security giant Palo Alto Networks and email security startup Abnormal. Even so, the firm doesn’t stick strictly to early-stage deals. It will also back high-potential, later-stage companies, even if it 'missed them early on.' The 17th fund included three such growth-stage bets: Anthropic, Revolut, and Wiz. The firm’s first investment in Anthropic came when the AI company raised its Series F at a $183 billion valuation, marking the largest investment in Greylock’s history. Motamedi estimates that roughly 15% of the new fund will be deployed into later-stage startups, but he maintains Greylock remains fundamentally an early-stage investor. 'When our partners meet every Monday to review our investment pipeline, the agenda consists primarily of people’s names rather than company names,' he said. 'We’re getting to know people even before they start a company. It’s really a bet on the person. Often the company doesn’t even exist.'