a16z brings growth fund to $8.5B days after launching new $1.1B fund | TechCrunch

Andreessen Horowitz held out its hand and returned with billions more in new funds to invest in startups.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has expanded its fifth growth fund to $8.5 billion. That means the firm added another $1.75 billion since the fund launched in January with $6.75 billion.

The firm’s announcement comes just days after a16z announced it had raised a fresh $1.1 billion for a new and different fund that it’s calling the “Machine Age Fund.” The fund’s throwback, steampunk-esque name reflects its focus on AI hardware startups developing chips, memory, networking, and storage.

As the growth fund’s name implies, it is cash dedicated to funding growth-stage startups that are ramping up products, expanding into new geographies, and scaling just about everything else.

Over seven years, the growth fund has invested in more than 100 companies, David George, a general partner who leads the growth investment team, wrote in his announcement blog. But in this age of AI, companies are reaching the growth stage faster and gobbling up more cash at higher valuations than ever, too.

With these billions, a16z is pursuing enterprise and consumer AI tech, defense tech, robotics, infrastructure hardware and software, and health tech — really the whole stack. In this election year, it is also spending big on politics and lobbying.

These new funds follow the $15 billion in new funding a16z announced in January. At the time, it had $90 billion of assets under management.