Lightspeed Venture Partners

History

Lightspeed was founded in 2000 by four enterprise founders who previously worked at Weiss, Peck & Greer and went to Stanford University together.

Lightspeed opened its first international office in Tel-Aviv in 2006 following Yoni Cheifetz joining the firm. This effort soon extended to India when Bejul Somaia joined the firm in 2008 to begin the firms India practice and then in Singapore in 2022. For the next decade, Lightspeed Venture Partners largely remained an enterprise software and infrastructure specialists.

Investments

Lightspeed led the Series A in Riverbed Technology in 2002 which went on to become one of the largest enterprise IPOs in 2006.

Lightspeed led the Series B of Mulesoft in 2007 which went on to IPO in 2017 before less than a year later being acquired by Salesforce for $6.5 billion.

Lightspeed led the Series A of Appdynamics in 2008 and on the eve of its expected IPO the company was acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion in 2017.

Lightspeed led the Series A of Nutanix in 2010 and the company went public in 2017 with the stock soaring more than 130% in its public debut.

Lightspeed led the Series B of Nest in 2011 and it was later acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in an all cash transaction in 2014.

Lightspeed led the Series C of Nicira in 2011 which was acquired by VMWare a year later for $1.2 billion.

In 2012, Lightspeed became the first venture investor in Snap Inc., a year after Snapchat was launched. Snapchat raised $485,000 in its seed round and an undisclosed amount of bridge funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners in 2012. Lightspeed Venture Partners was the fourth largest shareholder during Snap's IPO in 2017.{{Citation | publication-place =New York City

Lightspeed led the Series B in Affirm in 2013 and later went public in 2021 at nearly a $30 billion dollar market capitalization.

Lightspeed led the Series C of Guardant Health in 2014 which went public in 2018.

Lightspeed led the Series A of Rubrik in 2014 and is the largest shareholder in the company. Rubrik was founded by Bipul Sinha, a Venture Partner at Lightspeed.

Lightspeed seeded Forty Seven in 2015 and the company was later acquired by Gilead for $4.9 billion in 2020.

Lightspeed is the seed investor in Navan, the seed investor in Mistral, the seed investor in Thoughtspot, the seed investor in Ultima Genomics, the seed of Orca Bio, the Series A investor in Ai search company Glean Technologies, the Series A investor in Grafana, the series B of B2B marketplace Faire and the Series C of Cato Networks.

In 2018, the company invested in Multiverse, a British educational technology company. In June 2022, Lightspeed reinvested in the company as part of a $220 million investment round.

Funding

In 2022, Lightspeed raised $7.1 billion across four flagship funds including Lightspeed Venture Partners XIV-A/B, L.P. (“Fund XIV”) with $1.98 billion, Lightspeed Venture Partners Select V, L.P. (“Select Fund V”) with $2.26 billion, and Lightspeed Opportunity Fund II, L.P. (“Opportunity Fund II”) with $2.36 billion of committed capital. Separately, Lightspeed India Partners today announced the closing of a $500M early stage fund (“LSIP Fund IV”) as well as a partnership with blockchain firm, Lightspeed Faction.

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.

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

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.

In 2022, Lightspeed led a $50 million funding round in developer infrastructure company ngrok, reflecting the firm’s focus on tools enabling secure and scalable web application access.

References

References

1. Alex Konrad. (April 14, 2020). "VC Firm Lightspeed Raises $4 Billion In Startup Landscape Shaken By COVID-19".
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3. Vidra, Eze. (2008-05-12). "Lightspeed Venture Partners Oversubscribes Its Eight Fund, Raised $800M".
4. (2023-06-15). "India not for the fainthearted, but worth it: Lightspeed's Bejul Somaia after Sequoia's exit". The Economic Times.
5. "Multi-stage VC opens Singapore office with plan to deploy billions".
6. Marshall, Matt. (2006-09-22). "Shares of Riverbed soar 56.9 percent in IPO".
7. Taylor, Anita Balakrishnan, Harriet. (2017-03-17). "Mulesoft IPO beats Snap in first-day trading".
8. Balakrishnan, Anita. (2018-03-20). "Salesforce agrees to buy MuleSoft in $6.5 billion deal".
9. Roof, Katie. (2017-01-25). "Why the $3.7 billion AppDynamics acquisition happened right before IPO".
10. Gurdus, Anita Balakrishnan, Lizzy. (2016-09-30). "Tech unicorn Nutanix pops more than 130% at public debut".
11. Tilley, Aaron. "Google Acquires Smart Thermostat Maker Nest For $3.2 Billion".
12. (2012-07-23). "VMware Buys Nicira For $1.26 Billion And Gives More Clues About Cloud Strategy".
13. (3 February 2017). "Who's Going to Be a Billionaire? The Biggest Winners of Snap's I.P.O.". The New York Times.
14. 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.
15. (13 January 2021). "Affirm Almost Doubles in Debut After $1.2 Billion IPO".
16. Daily, Investor's Business. (2018-10-04). "Guardant Health IPO Raises $238 Million, Soars In First Trades".
17. Dorbian, Iris. (2015-03-24). "Rubrik pulls in $10 mln Series A".
18. "Bipul Sinha".
19. "Gilead to Acquire Forty Seven for $4.9 Billion".
20. Stone, Madeline. "These 7 travel startups have raised millions in VC money during the depths of the pandemic, as investors bet on travel roaring back".
21. Lunden, Ingrid. (2023-06-13). "France's Mistral AI blows in with a $113M seed round at a $260M valuation to take on OpenAI".
22. Rao, Leena. (2014-02-05). "ThoughtSpot Raises $10.7M From Lightspeed To Offer Intelligent Search And Data Visualization To The Enterprise".
23. (June 2022). "The Funded: Ultima Genomics comes out of stealth with unicorn valuation and $600M in funding".
24. link
25. Mhatre, Ravi. (2024-02-27). "Glean is the AI-powered work assistant enterprises desperately need".
26. "Grafana Labs Closes Series A".
27. Clark, Kate. (2018-12-14). "VCs back wholesale marketplace Faire with $100M at a $535M valuation".
28. "series c cato lightspeed - Google Search".
29. (2018-09-03). "WhiteHat announces Seed Funding Round".
30. Lunden, Ingrid. (2022-06-08). "Multiverse nabs $220M at a $1.7B valuation to expand its tech apprenticeship platform".
31. (2022-07-12). "Lightspeed Raises Over $7 Billion to Fund Early and Growth-Stage Entrepreneurs Around the Globe".
32. Loizos, Connie. (9 March 2016). "Lightspeed Venture Partners Raises $1.2 Billion".
33. "Business Insider: How to Remain King of the World amidst Titanic Disruptions".
34. "ngrok raises $50M to help developers deploy apps and services".