Sequoia Capital Raises $10 Billion in New Funding Round, Doubles Down with $2.5 Billion Bet on Anthropic

BlockBeats News, August 6th, according to Bloomberg, Sequoia Capital has completed a new round of financing totaling $10 billion. So far, the institution has returned a total of $5 billion in profits to investors other than SpaceX this year.

Sequoia Capital has started to heavily invest in AI. Since Alfred Lin and Pat Grady took over the company in November last year, Sequoia has announced approximately 20 AI-related investments. Projects that were previously considered too expensive in terms of valuation are now being pursued. In May of this year, Sequoia made an additional $2.5 billion investment in Anthropic. This investment is the largest Sequoia has made in its 54-year history. Initially, internal discussions were about investing $1 billion, but it was eventually decided to increase the amount to $2.5 billion.

During the same period, Sequoia also raised $10 billion for its growth and expansion fund. This was the first round of fundraising completed after the new leadership took office. Recently, Sequoia also led a $300 million financing round for the AI chip company Etched, with a post-investment valuation of $10.3 billion. To secure this deal, Sequoia brought more than 10 partners to meet with the founding team.

The former head, Roelof Botha, was more cautious about the high valuation of AI. Sequoia therefore missed the opportunity to invest in Anthropic at a lower price and has also repeatedly passed on further investment in OpenAI's current round, showing a clear sense of making up for lost opportunities. Sequoia would rather accept a higher valuation and not miss out on leading AI companies again.