Lightspeed raises over $4 billion for three new funds to support early and growth stage startups and entrepreneurs amid coronavirus threat

As startups and businesses continue to grapple with the fallout from coronavirus pandemic, Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm we’ve covered multiple times in the past, announced on Tuesday it has raised more than $4 billion for three new funds to support early and growth stage startups and entrepreneurs around the world even as the coronavirus outbreak threatens the global economy. The announcement comes as companies across the globe preparing to brace for an imminent economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

Founded in 2000 by Barry Eggers, Christopher Schaepe, Peter Nieh, and Ravi Mhatre, the Menlo Park, California-based Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 400 companies globally, including Snap, Nest, Nutanix, AppDynamics, MuleSoft, OYO, Guardant, StitchFix, and GrubHub. Lightspeed and its affiliates currently manage $10.5B across the global Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, China, Southeast Asia and Europ

“In these difficult times, as the world fights a pandemic, Lightspeed remains focused on this mission; to serve the world’s most extraordinary people building tomorrow’s companies, today. Not just in good times, but in all times. This pandemic has transformed both the personal and professional lives of employees, founders, and investors and will continue to present challenges in the coming months,” the company said.

It takes courage to start a company, and it requires leadership to see it grow and adapt as market forces test both the resiliency and sustainability of businesses in good days and bad. A scalable capital framework enables Lightspeed to support founders on a global scale when they have the courage, passion and earned insight to take on that risk. Lightspeed’s global and multi-stage strategy supports exceptional entrepreneurs, in any geography, and at any point in their entrepreneurial journey.

The firm’s there new funds are: Lightspeed Venture Partners XIII, L.P., Lightspeed Venture Partners Select IV, L.P., and Lightspeed Opportunity Fund, L.P. According to the announcement, Lightspeed Venture Partners XIII, L.P. is a $890 million fund designed to support bold founders in their earliest stages of development in the firm’s long-standing enterprise and consumer practices. Investing at the earliest stages of innovation, from Seed to Series A and B, it is the bedrock of how the firm was founded and operates today.

The second fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners Select IV, L.P, is a $1.83 billion fund designed to accelerate existing Lightspeed portfolio companies and identify new investments across our global platform. Select IV further cements Lightspeed’s ability to back outperforming companies and to grow Lightspeed’s exposure to outlier portfolio companies as they scale.

The last fund, Lightspeed Opportunity Fund, L.P, is a $1.5 billion fund established as a new fund vehicle for the Lightspeed platform to back breakout companies from across all of the global territories where we operate. It is more evident than ever that entrepreneurship is global – 2019 was the first year in venture capital where more breakout companies emerged outside of the US than inside of it. For over a decade, Lightspeed has worked with some of the most experienced partners and affiliates in China, India and Israel, and recently expanded into Europe and Southeast Asia.

“Taken together, this capital framework across three funds will position the firm to continue to serve founding teams, technologies and trends that are accelerating the innovation economy,” Lightspeed said.