Lightspeed today announced the closing of Lightspeed Venture Partners XIV-A/B, L.P. (Fund XIV) with $1.98 billion, Lightspeed Venture Partners Select V, L.P. (Select Fund V) with $2.26 billion, and Lightspeed Opportunity Fund II, L.P. (Opportunity Fund II) with $2.36 billion of committed capital. Separately, Lightspeed India Partners today announced the closing of a $500M early-stage fund (LSIP Fund IV). Also, today marks the unveiling of Lightspeed Faction, an independent team dedicated to building on Lightspeed’s nine-year history of backing exceptional founders in blockchain infrastructure.
Today’s funding, approximately 60% more than Lightspeed’s last flagship fundraise, focuses on expanding the firm’s early-stage vehicles and supporting its large and growing global platform.
Lightspeed Venture Partners XIV-A/B, L.P.
Lightspeed Venture Partners XIV-A/B, L.P. ($1.98B), is designed to support founders in their earliest stages of company development in the firm’s long-standing Enterprise, Consumer, Health and Fintech practices. Investing at the earliest stages of innovation, from incubation to Seed to Series B, drives the way Lightspeed fundamentally works with and supports companies at all stages.
Lightspeed Venture Partners Select V, L.P.
As companies begin to inflect and scale, they need a partner who can grow with them and support their scaling ambitions to be a category defining company. Lightspeed Venture Partners Select V, L.P. ($2.26B), accelerates existing Lightspeed portfolio companies and new investments across our global platform led by the Lightspeed Growth Team. Select V cements Lightspeed’s ability to back exceptional founders and outperforming companies and increases Lightspeed’s exposure to companies as they scale and enter the growth phase. In the past six years, Lightspeed has invested $2.2 Billion in early growth companies. And in the past two years alone, Lightspeed celebrated the IPOs and acquisitions of Affirm, Blend, Clever, Grab, Hillevax, The Honest Company, Outbrain, Pensando, TeneoBio, and TeneoTwo, and generated more than $2.7 billion in liquidity for their limited partners.
Lightspeed Opportunity Fund II, L.P., & Global Team of Investment Professionals and Advisors
The Lightspeed Opportunity Fund II, L.P. ($2.36B), is a platform to back breakout companies from across all of the global territories where Lightspeed operates. It is more evident than ever that entrepreneurship is global, and for over a decade, Lightspeed has worked with some of the most experienced partners in China, India, Israel, Europe and Southeast Asia.
The closing of Lightspeed India IV at its $500M hard-cap reflects the firm’s deepening commitment to the India and South East Asia region, since our first India investment in 2007. Alongside India IV, which is a dedicated early-stage fund vehicle, Lightspeed invests in growth-stage companies in the India and South East Asia region from its Select and Opportunity fund vehicles. Over the past 5 years, the firm’s presence has expanded to 28 professionals across four locations (Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Singapore), representing one of the largest venture advisory teams in the region.
Lightspeed has been a partner to a number of category leaders in India including Indian Energy Exchange, Oyo, Byju’s, Grab, Acko, Razorpay, Udaan, Sharechat and Innovaccer and we continue to witness the broadening and deepening of the opportunity in the region, led by world-class founders and an ever-expanding scope for technology to reshape the economy in India and Southeast Asia.
As the future of venture continues to be an increasingly global one, Lightspeed is positioned to invest in, and serve, exceptional founders at any stage and in any geography by actively leveraging our global footprint of investors and network of relationships. Consistent with this strategy, we’re excited to welcome Bejul Somaia to Lightspeed’s leadership team, where he will contribute to the firm’s strategy and global operations in addition to his existing roles advising on investments in India, Southeast Asia and Europe. Bejul joined Lightspeed in 2008 and brings deep experience backing entrepreneurs and helping to build Lightspeed in India and Southeast Asia, where he’ll continue advising on investments and supporting the regions’ best and brightest Founders.
Lightspeed Faction (Faction)
Faction (https://www.faction.vc/ ) is an experienced group of blockchain veterans that collaborates with the Lightspeed global platform to meet exceptional founders wherever they reside. The senior Faction team is run by Sam Harrison and Banafsheh Fathieh and anchored by a growing team of crypto native investors.
Faction believes the innovation economy is at the precipice of a significant computing paradigm shift with blockchain companies leading emerging use cases that will redefine both underlying IT infrastructure and the industries they serve. From Fintech, to Consumer, Enterprise and even Healthcare, the team is seeing the manner in which blockchain companies may fundamentally change how businesses are organized, how distributed computing systems are arranged, and how entire economies and platforms operate. Blockchain is changing how network participants are incentivized, how startups within this ecosystem are funded and how communities can coalesce their shared power to create change.
Taken together, this capital framework will position Lightspeed and its partners to continue to serve founding teams, technologies and trends that are accelerating the innovation economy. Lightspeed remains more committed than ever to the mission of serving the world’s most extraordinary people building tomorrow’s companies, today.
