Benchmark Joins the Late-Stage Crowd

For most of this decade, venture capital has morphed from a game of spotting the best young startups to making a more complex range of investments—from public stocks and cryptocurrencies to multibillion-dollar bets on older startups. General Catalyst even bought a hospital system!

But industry stalwart Benchmark had held fast to a definition of VC that was more common when the firm was founded two decades ago. As Thrive, Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners each announced multi-billion-dollar fundraises, Benchmark repeatedly raised funds from about $400 million to $500 million—until recently.