Foundation Capital, an early supporter of Solana and Cerebras, collects a fund for $ 600 million

Foundation’s capital He had been a long way as he was forced to reduce his $ 750 million in 2008 to $ 282 million (its sixth main fund) In 2013

On Tuesday, a 30-year-old company announced that she had collected a $ 600 million leading fund, which is 20% larger than the predecessor Fund $ 500 million It closed about three years ago.

The Foundation credits its revival with adherence to its knitting: investing in a seed stage.

“Most companies that have existed for 30 years have usually undergone multi -stage, multigography, multistrategy. Instead, we were very focused on the early stage, “General Partner Steve Vassalo told TechCrunch.

The foundation is the first institutional investor in over 70% of its portfolio companies.

“We are looking for what I call” 0 billion dollars “markets in Enterprise, AI, Fintech and Crypto,” Vassalo said. “These are markets that do not even exist until the founders will be.”

He explained that when Cerebras started in 2016, from Foundy Capital’s office, the AI ​​Chip market does not exist. “At that time, the AI ​​load was insignificant,” Vassalo explained, adding that NVIDIA graphic processors were mainly used by gamers and graphic designers.

Since then, Cerebras has become a $ 4.25 billion company. The company filed a public S-1 last fall but delayed its IPO Mainly because of a review by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS).

Foundation Capital was also the first institutional investor in the Solana Blockchain platform.

Vassallo compares how they look for the founders of the pre -criminal minority reports. “Sometimes we are joking about identifying pre -approved ones before they even leave their last job,” he said.

The Foundation claims that by creating new markets, the company’s profitable investments ultimately “own their categories”, which leads to exponentially better results.

Vassallo attributes the company’s ability to gather a bigger fund than its predecessor In this market to the history of the company for high monetary distributions.

“We have returned approximately $ 1.4 billion back to our LP in the last three years,” Vassalo said, adding that this amount is over three times more than what the company called (or asked) from its investors during the period.

The last outputs that helped manage the company’s cash repayments include the sale of a fraud detection company EvolutionIQ to CCC for $ 730 million and acquiring cybersecurity startup Cyberak venafi for $ 1.5 billionS

Although the foundation is firmly to adhere to its strategy at an early stage, it claims that it needs a larger fund, as the size of seed and Serie A transactions has increased and the company wants to continue to own 15% to 20% of each company when it first invests.

But one thing about the foundation is different now. Charles Moldov, an investor who spent nearly 20 years in the company and supported companies such as LendingClub, Rappi and Kiavi, retired last year, leaving a foundation with four common partners.