Austin-based totally totally missionary enterprise 8VC, led by arguable Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, has raised $880 million in its 5th fund.
In a blog post posted in recent times, Lonsdale — who serves as 8VC’s well-known partner — stated that his company’s challenge is “to restore a damaged international.”
While he did not specify which industries the new fund may target or average test length for, Lonsdale did show that 8VC now manages “over $6 billion in dedicated capital” and that it plans to make investments “at each degree,” similarly to building companies itself. He moreover shared that the 8VC team has grown to more than 60 people.
The headquarters of 8VC moved from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, in 2020. At the time, Lonsdale tweeted that Austin had turned into “some distance” greater tolerant of ideological variety than San Francisco.” He introduced: “It’s typically an brilliant concept to have outstanding left hippies round for first-rate subcultures, tunes, meals, and so forth… Simply instead, they don’t all run the u . S . A ..”
Today, he wrote that 8VC’s new headquarters within the Texas capital have “come to be a magnet for entrepreneurs and developers from internationally.”
The fund is thought to be the biggest Texas-based task fund for startups, in step with AustinInno.
A philosophical tone dominated Lonsdale’s booklet about the new fund: “There are disturbing conditions affecting entrepreneurship as well,” he wrote. “But as marketers, broken subjects present possibilities.” And even as we look deeper, we see amazing adjustments taking location all around us. AI is remodeling the area outside and inside of pc structures; genomic engineering and new scientific expertise are reworking the arena of cells; advanced production is transforming the arena of machines; and new commercial enterprise fashions, incentives, and innovation are reworking how we get preserve of our healthcare. “These are some of our frontiers.”
Over the years, 8VC has invested in corporations spanning a number of industries, inclusive of logistics, lifestyles sciences, healthcare, IT infrastructure, authorities and safety, financial services, customers, and agencies. According to PitchBook, the company has made around 500 investments. Among its portfolio groups are Asana, Blend, Flexport, hims and hers, Mammoth Biosciences, Elon Musk’s The Boring Company, Qualia, and Wish.
At instances, Lonsdale has attracted as lots interest to himself as his portfolio organizations. In the early part of the yr, he made headlines and ruffled a range of feathers after his tweets approximately approximately “woke” tech variety. Other controversies wherein he has been embroiled consist of a breakup with earlier making investment companions and a excessive-profile lawsuit filed with the aid of a former Stanford student that became later dropped.
Lonsdale additionally, in relation to the paternity depart of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, tweeted in late 2021 that “any man in a crucial function who takes 6 months of depart for a newborn is a loser.”
He has often defended himself against next backlashes, saying his words have been misconstrued or taken out of context.
In a New Yorker article this month on the transformation of Austin in current years from a liberal bastion to “a city greater orientated towards libertarianism than liberalism,” Lonsdale talked with the component’s creator about his adopted town, telling him that a part of its appeal is that politics may be mentioned in a civil manner.
“In San Francisco,” Lonsdale is quoted as saying, “once I could pass closer to someone, they’d be, like, ‘You’re an evil man or woman.’ So there’s something despite the fact that very wholesome approximately Texas. I definitely wish we are able to keep it this way.”
According to SEC filings, 8VC closed its closing flagship fund with $640 million in capital commitments in 2021; it has moreover raised several particular purpose cars within the trendy years, in keeping with filings.
