Kleiner Perkins Closes On $525 Million For Its 15th Venture Fund, ‘KPCB 15?

Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers is announcing this evening that it has closed on a $525 million round for its fifteenth venture fund, dubbed 'KPCB 15.'

The fund will be headed up by 10 managing members: Mike Abbott, Chi-Hua Chien, Amol Deshpande, John Doerr, Bing Gordon, Wen Hsieh, Randy Komisar, Matt Murphy, Beth Seidenberg, and Ted Schlein. Longtime Kleiner Perkins investment partners Brook Byers, Ray Lane and Bill Joy are all notably off the list, which appears to confirm earlier reports that they will be declining their participation in future funds as part of a gradual general change in the partnership structure at the firm.

Kleiner Perkins says it will focus the fund toward making investments in early-stage digital consumer and enterprise, green technology, and life sciences companies. According to Kleiner Perkins, which for years has been known for placing more emphasis on green tech, it will place an extra focus on all things web going forward: "While KPCB has invested in the digital enterprise space for decades, a further emphasis will be made in KPCB 15," the firm wrote in a press release.

$525 million is certainly big, but it's not outsized given Kleiner Perkins' history and the larger environment. The offering price for KPCB's 14th fund was $650 million, and its 13th fund's offering was sized at $950 million, according to regulatory documents. It's also important to note that this is by no means KPCB's only fund. In late 2010 the firm raised $1 billion for its digital growth fund, focused on later stage companies, for example, and the firm has a number of other funds focused on specific initiatives and markets.

Meanwhile, other venture capital firms have raised some truly massive rounds in recent months. Last week NEA filed documents indicating that it is raising up to $2.5 billion for a new venture fund that could be one of the largest ever in VC history. And earlier this year, Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global each raised $1.5 billion rounds for new VC funds.

• KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a well known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, due in large part to their past success. They were early investors in many significant companies, including Amazon, AOL, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Google, Intuit, Macromedia, Netscape, Segway, and Sun Microsystems. The name of the firm comes from the four founding partners: Eugene Kleiner, Tom Perkins, Frank J. Caufield, and Brook Byers. In March 2008, KPCB announced the iFund, a $100M investment initiative focused on ideas...

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