Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
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Andreessen Horowitz explain The company raised $7.2 billion across five different funds on Tuesday, a sign of optimism in the tech startup world, which has been lacking major exits in the past two years.
“This is an important milestone for us,” Ben Horowitz, who co-founded the company with Marc Andreessen in 2009, wrote in a blog post.
The largest portion of the new funding came from Andreessen Horowitz’s growth fund, which raised $3.75 billion. The funds are invested in later-stage companies that are considered closer to going public, or capital-intensive businesses that require big checks.
Horowitz said in the post that $1.25 billion will be earmarked for infrastructure, including investments in artificial intelligence, while $1 billion will go to app investments, $600 million will go to gaming, and another $600 million will go to The company’s so-called “American Vitality” or “Founders and Companies” support national interests. These include aerospace, defence, education and housing.
The firm initially aims to raise $6.9 billion from investors for a new set of funds, including two focused on artificial intelligence, according to Bloomberg reported before. Artificial intelligence investments are hot in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, while the broader market has been in the doldrums.
Investment in tech IPOs and new startups has surged to record levels since 2021, with venture investors tightening their wallets. Soaring inflation and rising interest rates in 2022 are forcing investors out of risky assets and forcing cash-burning startups to slash costs. Even as the stock market recovers, venture capital deals remain sluggish.
Data show that U.S. venture capital deal volume fell to its lowest level since 2017 in the first quarter data Published earlier this month by PitchBook. The story is similar globally, with global deal volume reaching its lowest level since 2016 and total deal value falling to its lowest level since 2019.
At the same time, the number of technology company IPOs since the end of 2021 has been very low. Reddit and Astra Labs It went public in the first quarter, making it the first venture-backed technology company to go public since September. They accounted for 73.4% of total U.S. exit value during the same period, according to PitchBook data.
Horowitz did not mention the market slowdown in his post. He also didn’t hint that any new funding would be dedicated to cryptocurrencies, an area Andreessen Horowitz was particularly bullish on during the 2021 cryptocurrency boom that saw Bitcoin hit all-time highs. The company raised $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency funds in 2022, bringing its total cryptocurrency and blockchain investments raised to $7.6 billion.
Andreessen Horowitz remains on track to raise more money for its cryptocurrency fund and standalone biotech fund, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. A company spokesman had no comment and directed CNBC to read the blog post.
Andreessen Horowitz One of the most high-profile bets of the past few years involves WeWork’s controversial co-founder Adam Neumann and his startup Flow. Andreessen Horowitz wrote a $350 million check to the company, which was just getting started and had yet to enter the residential real estate market.
Andreessen Horowitz said in a report Blog article At the time, Neumann’s efforts to redesign the WeWork office experience were “often underestimated” and the company liked “seeing repeat founders build on past successes by learning from their experiences.”
watch: Adam Neumann deserves second shot, CEO says
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