A16z

AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of May 2024, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz invests in both early-stage startups and established growth companies. Its investments span the healthcare, consumer, cryptocurrency, gaming, fintech, education, and enterprise IT (including cloud computing, security, and software as a service) industries.

Founding and partnering

Between 2006 and 2010, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz actively invested in technology companies. Both separately and together, they invested $4 million in 45 startups, including Twitter. During this time, the two became known as " super angel" investors.

On July 6, 2009, Andreessen and Horowitz launched their venture capital fund with an initial capitalization of $300 million. In November 2010, at a time when the field of venture capitalism was contracting, the company raised an additional $650 million for a second venture fund. In less than two years, the firm was managing a total of $1.2 billion under the two funds.

As of March 27, 2014, the firm was managing $4 billion in assets following the closing of its fourth fund at $1.5 billion.

In addition to Andreessen and Horowitz, the firm's general partners include John O'Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan, Peter Levine, Chris Dixon, Vijay Pande, Martin Casado, and Andrew Chen.

In March 2019, it was reported that Andreessen Horowitz was opening an office in San Francisco.

In January 2022, Andreessen Horowitz raised $9 billion for its venture capital, growth-stage, and biotech-focused funds.

As of May 2024, the firm is managing $42 billion in assets.

Notable investments

2009

In 2009, Andreessen Horowitz made its first two investments: one in business management SaaS developer Apptio and one in Skype stock.

According to Horowitz, the investment was seen as risky by other experts in the field, who believed the company would be crippled by ongoing intellectual property litigation and direct competitive attacks from Google and Apple. The firm's founders viewed the investment as a success following Skype's sale to Microsoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion.

2010–2011

In 2010, Andreessen Horowitz invested $10 million in the cloud company Okta, leading its Series A round.

In 2011, Andreessen Horowitz invested $80 million in Twitter, becoming the first venture firm to hold stock in all four of the highest-valued privately held social media companies at the time: Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, and Zynga.

Andreessen Horowitz also invested in Airbnb, Lytro, Jawbone, Belly, Foursquare, Stripe, and other high-tech companies.

2012–2013

In 2012, Andreessen Horowitz invested in 156 companies, including 90 in its portfolio and 66 startups through its funding of Y Combinator's Start Fund. The company invested $100 million in GitHub, which netted over $1 billion for the fund when Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion. In 2013, Andreessen Horowitz invested in Clinkle, Coinbase, Databricks, Lyft, Oculus VR, PagerDuty, Pixlee, Ripple, Soylent, Swiftype, and uBiome.

2014–2015

In 2014, the firm led a $57 million Series B round in the A/B testing startup Optimizely. The same year, the company invested in several more companies, including Tanium for $90 million, BuzzFeed, and Forward Networks. In 2015, the firm invested $40 million in Stack Exchange, $2.8 million in Distelli, and $80 million in cloud-based CAD software company Onshape. Also in 2015, Andreessen Horowitz invested in the blogging platform Medium, Samsara, Improbable, Honor, Inc., OpenBazaar, a blockchain startup, and nootropics and biohacking company Nootrobox.

2016–2019

In 2016, the firm led an $8.1 million Series A round in Everlaw, a legal technology company, and led a $3.5 million Series Seed round in RapidAPI, an API connection platform for developers. Also in 2016, the firm invested $2 million in Cardiogram, a digital health company, and in Apeel Sciences, a food science business.

In 2017, the firm invested in Sigma, Health IQ, Asimov, and Cadre.

In 2018, the firm raised $300 million for a dedicated cryptocurrency fund. It also invested in Imply, Smartcar, PeerStreet, CryptoKitties, Dfinity, Earnin, Pindrop, Tenfold, and Very Good Security. In September 2018, Andreessen Horowitz participated in a Series A funding round in Applied Intuition, a software company specializing in products for autonomous vehicles (AVs), and Marc Andreessen joined the Applied Intuition board.

In 2019, the firm provided $15.3 million in Series A funding to Substack, some of which went to bringing high-profile writers onto the platform. In June 2019, the firm also invested in a $9.2 million Series A round in AnyRoad, an experiential marketing platform, and David Ulevitch from Andreessen Horowitz joined the AnyRoad board.

2020

In 2020, the firm led a $150 million Series G round in Roblox, a social video game platform for children.

In April 2020, the firm led a $50 million Series D round in Figma, a vector graphics editor and prototyping tool.

Also in April 2020, the firm raised $515 million for a second cryptocurrency-focused fund.

In May 2020, the firm made a $12 million Series A investment in Clubhouse ($10 million in primary capital plus $2 million toward purchasing shares), an audio-chat social networking app valued at nearly $100 million as of December 2020.

2021

In January 2021, the firm led a $100 million Series B for the audio-chat social networking app Clubhouse, reportedly valuing it at $1 billion. In April 2021, it led a $220 million Series D for mobile banking and fintech company Current.

In July 2021, the firm led a $100 million Series A for the NFT marketplace OpenSea, reportedly valuing it at $1.5 billion.

In September 2021, the firm led an $18 million Series A fundraise in Pearl Health, a healthcare technology company.

In October 2021, the firm led a $150M Series B round at a $3B valuation in Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, the developer of the crypto-based online game Axie Infinity.

In December 2021, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter received a $100 million investment from the firm's crypto fund with the expectation that it would pivot to blockchain technology. The decision to pivot backfired, alienating many of Kickstarter's users, and ended up damaging its reputation.

2022

In March 2022, Andreessen Horowitz led the round to raise $450 million at a $4B valuation in Yuga Labs (known for Bored Apes). In October 2022, it was reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating Yuga Labs due to concerns that sales of their digital assets violated investment laws.

In March 2022, the firm led a $27 million Series A for Rutter, a universal API for commerce data.

In March 2022, the firm and Lux Capital co-led a $90 million round for Los Angeles–based machine-parts startup Hadrian Automation.

In April 2022, it led a $12 million Series A round for Bounce, a marketplace for consumers to access underutilized space in local businesses.

In May 2022, the firm announced the launch of its largest fund to date at $4.5 billion. The fund is set to focus on cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. The firm said that $1.5 billion was allocated to seed investments, while the remaining $3 billion would be earmarked for venture investments.

In August 2022, the firm announced it would invest about $350 million in Flow, the latest organization begun by WeWork founder Adam Neumann. Flow's purported aim is to create a branded product in the housing market with consistent community features, reimagining how real estate works in the U.S. The decision was met with some criticism due to Neumann's business issues during his time at WeWork.

The firm committed to $400 million in equity investment toward the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk that completed in October 2022. According to The Washington Post, by September 2024, the firm had lost $288 million on its Twitter investment.

Structure

Andreessen Horowitz partners work on behalf of all its portfolio companies, an approach modeled after the Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency. In 2010, the company hired Margit Wennmachers, a marketing executive at the partner level.

As of 2011, the firm had maintained a database of designers, coders, and executives and used it to help fill positions at its startups. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers became a special advisor to Andreessen Horowitz in June 2011.

In 2012, former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty was appointed Andreessen Horowitz's second special advisor. Fenty was hired to advise the firm's portfolio companies on working with local, state, and federal governments.

In 2019, the firm applied to restructure as a registered investment adviser in order to have more freedom to take on riskier bets like cryptocurrency.

References

External links

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Frank Chen, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz: 'Are you a mercenary or a missionary?'
(April 24, 2013)
{{Andreessen Horowitz

Venture capital firms of the United States
Companies based in Menlo Park, California
Financial services companies established in 2009
2009 establishments in California