Kleiner Perkins, a long-standing venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, is launching off 2022 with a bang, celebrating five decades in business and raising $1.8 billion for two new funds, KP20 and Select2. KP20 is an $800 million venture fund that focuses on early-stage investments in enterprise, consumer, hard tech, fintech, and healthcare companies, while Select2 is a $1 billion fund that expands KP20’s core investment strategy to include high-inflection investments in those same five categories.
Kleiner Perkins Select2 is the follow-up to the firm’s $750 million Kleiner Perkins Select fund, which was disclosed in April. Kleiner Perkins’ objective, according to partner Ilya Fushman, is the same today as it was in 1972: “Venture is a non-scalable, boutique craft that requires very dedicated practitioners with broad and complementary experiences that span technology, operations, and investment.”
Fushman said the investor team curated over the last four years is taking over the next generation of the firm, while the new funds will be able to back the next generation of iconic companies, with a history of being early investors in technology darlings like Google, Amazon, Netscape, and Genentech. In addition to the money, Kleiner Perkins upgraded Annie Case, a consumer marketplaces and digital health expert, and Josh Coyne, who manages business software investments, to new partners.
Case told TechCrunch that more investment is going into mental and behavioral health and alternative medicines in the digital health space, while there is a lot going on in education technology on the consumer side, owing to school districts and parents adapting to the experience of teaching during the global pandemic. In addition, the firm is devoting more time to investigating crypto and web3 potential. Kleiner Perkins is reacting to the current conditions, according to Fushman, where companies are not only expanding bigger and quicker, but also growing across sectors, technology, and worldwide. The size of the opportunity is larger than it has ever been, as evidenced by exit valuations and the number of companies founded each year.
Furthermore, having more fund capital at the firm’s disposal allows it to deploy it in later rounds, or with a larger check to get in, while still being able to provide the same early-stage venture help Kleiner Perkins known. “Growing beyond early-stage and providing a whole spectrum of funding is an exciting time in the venture business,” Fushman added. “As we help firms expand, if we notice an inflection point or if we lose out on the Series A, we can use the Select fund to aid.”
