GGV Capital, the now 20-year-old venture firm that has long invested primarily in the U.S. and China, just closed on a whopping $2.52 billion in fresh capital commitments across four new funds, it announced this morning.
Much of the money will be invested through the firm’s eighth flagship fund, which has $1.5 billion to plug into startups across all stages. It also closed on $366 million for an opportunity fund to double down on breakout investments (GGV Capital VIII Plus); $80 million for a fund that invites the founders in its network to invest alongside GGV; and a “discovery” fund that closed with $610 million and aims to fund founders around the globe at the earliest stage of their startups’ development.
GGV also recently held a close on its second RMB fund with approximately RMB 3.4 billion, $525 million, three years after closing its first RMB fund in 2018 with the equivalent of $236 million.
The capital collectively brings assets under management at the firm to $9.2 billion across 17 funds.
Given the state of venture investing right now, GGV’s newest haul isn’t a surprise. Money has continued to flood into the asset class fueled partly by low interest rates (institutions are trying to find “alpha”) and the overall growth of the private market over the last decade. Because companies have remained private for so long, VCs have enjoyed much of the upside of their growth and benefited from huge leaps when many of these same companies have gone public.
Of course, not all funds get a sizable piece of the right companies. GGV appears to be fairly adept at writing meaningful checks into startups that matter.
Though it owned less than 5% of some of its portfolio companies, as evidenced in their S-1 filings (Affirm, Airbnb, Peloton, Slack, Square, Zendesk), it has amassed big positions in others, including Opendoor (5%), Poshmark (7.9%) and Wish (6.2%),
GGV, which also invests in Latin American, India, Southeast Asia and Israel, has bets in many still-private companies that are very highly valued, too. Among these is the infrastructure automation company Hashicorp, which raised money at a $5.1 billion valuation last year; the online education company Zuoyeban, which was reportedly valued at $6.5 billion in a round that closed in December; and in StockX, the online resale marketplace that was assigned a $2.8 billion valuation in December when it closed its newest round.
Either way, the announcement seems to underscore that, for now at least, there’s still no end in sight of a years-long trend of big funds growing exponentially bigger.
Just yesterday, the 25-year-old investment firm TCV unveiled a record $4 billion fund. Late last year, Andreessen Horowitz closed a pair of funds totaling $4.5 billion. Insight Partners also closed its biggest fund to date by a lot last year, a $9.5 billion growth equity vehicle.
One of the few top venture firms to consistently buck the trend has been Benchmark Capital. Last year, it quietly closed on a $425 million fund, which is roughly the same size as most of its previous nine funds, dating back to its 1995 founding.