Lightspeed Venture Partners
Founded2000
HeadquartersMenlo Park, California, United States
Area served
United States, Israel, India, China, Europe, Southeast Asia
Key people
Barry Eggers
Ravi Mhatre
Peter Nieh
Andrew Moley
ProductsGrowth capital, Private equity, Venture capital
Websitewww.lsvp.com

Lightspeed Venture Partners is an American venture capital firm focusing on multi-stage investments in the enterprise, consumer, and health sectors. Lightspeed invests in seed, early and growth-stage companies.

The company invests in the U.S. and abroad, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, China, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Lightspeed has ten offices globally.[1]

History

The firm was founded in October 2000 when investors from Weiss, Peck & Greer left to start Lightspeed following the sale of the investment management business to Robeco. Jeremy Liew joined the firm in 2006 as its first consumer tech-focused partner.[1] For the next decade, Lightspeed Venture Partners largely remained an enterprise software and infrastructure specialist, investing in: Nimble Storage, Nutanix, MuleSoft, and AppDynamics.[1]

In 2012, Lightspeed became the first venture investor in Snap Inc., a year after Snapchat was launched.[2] Snapchat raised $485,000 in its seed round and an undisclosed amount of bridge funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners in 2012.[3] Beyond the two Snap founders, the two biggest shareholders for the planned early 2017 Snap IPO were Benchmark and Lightspeed Venture Partners, both prior Snap investors and venture-capital firms from Silicon Valley. They held a combined stake of about 20%.[4]

In September 2020, Lightspeed Venture Partners launched its Southeast Asia operations with a new regional headquarters in Singapore.[5]

In November 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lightspeed Venture Partners is a major investor in Chinese semiconductor firms, raising U.S. national security concerns.[6] Lightspeed China Partners closed its largest funding round at $920 million the same month.[7]

Since 2000, Lightspeed Venture Partners has made significant investments, including: Aledade,[8] BlueNile,[9] Flixster,[10] Kosmix,[11] Moveworks,[12] Outschool,[13] OYO Rooms,[14] OverOps,[15] Pixxel,[16] Playdom,[17] Ripple Labs,[18] Rubrik,[19] Snapchat,[20] Solazyme,[21] TutorVista,[22] Vector Space Systems,[23] YugabyteDB,[24] Fusion-io,[25][26] Cameo, Calm, Goop, The Honest Company, Zola, MuleSoft, Nutanix, Nimble Storage,[1] Grubhub,[27] SolarEdge,[28] Zscaler,[29] Giphy,[30] IEX.,[31] Terraform Labs (blockchain, which crashed),[32] and BTCC.[33]

In December 2023, Andalusia Labs, previously RiskHarbor, achieved a valuation surpassing $1 billion with a successful $48 million Series A funding round. Leading this investment was Lightspeed Venture Partners. Noteworthy contributions came from Mubadala Capital, the asset management subsidiary of Mubadala Investment Company and existing investors such as Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Digital Currency Group.[34]

Funding

In 2014, Lightspeed closed Lightspeed X, a $1 billion fund focused on the Enterprise, Consumer and Cleantech markets. As of 2012, the firm had $3 billion in committed capital.[35]

In March 2016, the company raised two new funds totaling in $1.2 billion.[36]

In April 2020, Lightspeed Venture Partners raised $4.2 billion across three funds: $890 million for its latest early-stage venture fund, a $1.83 billion growth fund for later-stage investments, and a $1.5 billion opportunity fund for doubling down on winners in its international portfolio.[1]

In 2022, Lightspeed raised $7.1 billion across four funds and also launched joint crypto and blockchain partnerships.[37]

Lightspeed Scout Program

The Lightspeed Scout Program brings together entrepreneurs, future investors, and operators, to advance their skills and track record as early-stage investors. Lightspeed supports Scouts with capital, programming, and community. Scouts work with Lightspeed Partners and their fellow Scouts to invest in aspiring entrepreneurs in their network and build their personal investment strategy. The 2020 Lightspeed Scout Program brought together people from black, Latino, indigenous, and Pacific Islander communities to receive support and capital as they join the venture industry. The firm's aspiration is that the Scout Program's renewed focus and commitment to representation will inspire the future leaders of venture.[38]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Alex Konrad (April 14, 2020). "VC Firm Lightspeed Raises $4 Billion In Startup Landscape Shaken By COVID-19". Forbes. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
  2. ↑ Benner, Katie (3 February 2017). "Who's Going to Be a Billionaire? The Biggest Winners of Snap's I.P.O." The New York Times.
  3. ↑ Gallagher, Billy (October 29, 2012). "You Know What's Cool? A Billion Snapchats: App Sees Over 20 Million Photos Shared Per Day, Releases On Android". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 22, 2012.
  4. ↑ Winkler, Rolfe (February 3, 2017), Snap IPO Will Mint Fortunes for Founders, Two Big Investors, New York City: Wall Street Journal, retrieved January 4, 2017
  5. ↑ "Lightspeed announces the launch of its Southeast Asia operations". TechCrunch. 17 September 2020. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  6. ↑ O'Keeffe, Kate; Somerville, Heather; Jie, Yang (2021-11-12). "U.S. Companies Aid China's Bid for Chip Dominance Despite Security Concerns". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
  7. ↑ "Lightspeed China raises $920M for new funds, adds five partners". 30 November 2021.
  8. ↑
  9. ↑
  10. ↑ Olsen, Stefanie (April 4, 2008). "Flixster brings in millions to boost movie-ratings network". CNET.
  11. ↑ Wauters, Robin (April 18, 2011). "Walmart Ventures Into The Social Media Space With Acquisition Of Kosmix". TechCrunch.
  12. ↑ D'Onfro, Jillian (April 17, 2019). "Moveworks raises $30 million to automate IT support". Forbes.
  13. ↑ "Outschool Raises $45M in Series B Funding". 18 September 2020.
  14. ↑ Sharma, Samidha (April 24, 2017). "Oyo halves SoftBank-led latest round size to $250 million". The Times of India.
  15. ↑ Primack, Dan (April 20, 2016). "Term Sheet — Wednesday, April 20". Fortune.
  16. ↑ "Lightspeed Leads Seed Funding In Spacetech Startup Pixxel". 19 August 2020. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  17. ↑ TAKAHASHI, Dean (July 27, 2010). "Disney buys social game firm Playdom for up to $763.2M". VentureBeat.
  18. ↑ Azzano, Michael (November 12, 2013). "Ripple Labs Announces $3.5 Million Investment Round". Marketwired.
  19. ↑ Mhatre, Ravi (May 9, 2016). "Meet the founder behind Rubrik, one of Lightspeed's biggest investments to date". Medium.
  20. ↑ Shontell, Alyson (March 2, 2017). "How Snapchat's first investor — whose stake is now worth $2 billion — found Snapchat when it had less than 100,000 users". Business Insider.
  21. ↑ "Who Wins in the Solazyme IPO?". 27 May 2011. Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  22. ↑ ELUVANGAL, SREEJIRAJ (April 23, 2012). "Pearson takes control of TutorVista for Rs577 crore". Business Wire.
  23. ↑ Vance, Ashlee (June 29, 2017). "SpaceX Vet's Startup Readies Small Rockets for Takeoff". Bloomberg.
  24. ↑ "Yugabyte Closes $188 Million Series C Funding Round Bringing Valuation to Over $1.3B". www.businesswire.com. 2021-10-28. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  25. ↑ Murph, Darren (2009-04-07). "Fusion-io nabs more funding, teases new PCIe-based ioSAN". engadet.com.
  26. ↑ Jon Brodkin (April 8, 2009). "Fusion-io lands $47 million to ramp up development of flash storage". Network World. Retrieved September 20, 2016.
  27. ↑ "GrubHub Raises $50M In VC Funding". 22 September 2011.
  28. ↑ "SolarEdge Technologies Secures a US$25 Million Financing Round". 14 June 2023.
  29. ↑ "Zscaler Secures $38 Million Investment Round".
  30. ↑ "After An Approach From Facebook, Giphy Raises $17M At An $80M Valuation". 29 January 2015.
  31. ↑ Mittal, Apoorva; Shah, Sneha (12 July 2022). "Lightspeed Venture Partners to increase its focus on growth deals". The Economic Times.
  32. ↑ Yaffe-Bellany, David; Griffith, Erin (18 May 2022). "How a Trash-Talking Crypto Founder Caused a $40 Billion Crash". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
  33. ↑ Chernova, Yuliya; Cheung, Sonja (18 November 2013). "Top Bitcoin Exchange BTC China Secures First VC Round". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 12 December 2022.
  34. ↑ Bandyopadhyay, Somshankar (December 14, 2023). "Andalusia Labs secures $48 million in Series a funding at $1 billion valuation". Khaneej Times. Retrieved January 4, 2024.
  35. ↑ "Business Insider: How to Remain King of the World amidst Titanic Disruptions". Retrieved 2013-02-25.
  36. ↑ Loizos, Connie (9 March 2016). "Lightspeed Venture Partners Raises $1.2 Billion". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
  37. ↑ Jessica Matthews (July 12, 2022). "Exclusive: Lightspeed raises $7.1B across four funds and forms new crypto fund with Blockchain Ventures vet". Fortune. Retrieved October 7, 2022.
  38. ↑ Alex Konrad (May 11, 2021). "BLCK VC Launches Scout Program With Lightspeed, Sequoia To Support More Black Investors". Forbes. Retrieved May 12, 2022.
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