Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is nearing the close of its fourth growth fund, Founders Fund Growth IV, with $6 billion in capital commitments, per sources close to the firm. As with most of the firm’s fundraises, demand from outside investors exceeds the fund’s capacity, according to those sources. Additionally, about $1.5 billion of the capital is coming from the Founders Fund’s partners, one of the sources told TechCrunch.
The fresh fundraise comes less than a year after Founders Fund closed its third growth fund, a $4.6 billion vehicle intended primarily for follow-on investments in its successful late-stage companies.
The 21-year-old firm has an impressive portfolio of winning startups. Founders Fund was an early investor in AI cloud computing company Crusoe, workforce management platform Rippling, and fintechs Stripe and Ramp.
The firm was also the first institutional investor in data analytics giant Palantir Technologies, and holds stakes in numerous other defense tech companies,, including SpaceX, Flock Safety, and Anduril, which Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens co-founded and that the firm backed from its first seed round. (Nine-year-old Anduril is currently reported to be raising a massive $4 billion round at a $60 billion valuation.)
Founders Fund’s growth-stage capital ambitions are not limited to its existing portfolio alone.
Last month, for example, the San Francisco-based firm made its first direct investment in Anthropic. Founders Fund, along with D. E. Shaw Ventures, Dragoneer, ICONIQ, and MGX, co-led a $30 billion investment into the leading AI lab at a $380 billion post-money valuation. The investment makes Founders Fund one of the few firms with significant stakes in both of the leading AI labs — it’s also an investor in OpenAI.
Although Founders Fund is aggressively raising growth capital, the firm has not raised a new early-stage fund since early 2022, when it announced its eighth early-stage fund with $1.8 billion in capital commitments.
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In 2023, the firm cut that fund in half to $900 million in response to worsening conditions. Founders Fund reallocated the remaining $900 million into a separate early-stage fund that officially launched last October, according to a regulatory filing.
Founders Fund declined to comment.
