Bessemer Venture Partners Raises $5.75 Billion for Two AI Funds
Thursday, 24 September 2026, 00:03
The venture firm is betting that artificial intelligence startups will keep scaling faster than any other technology category.
Venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners announced on September 23 that it had raised $5.75 billion for two new funds. The capital will be invested in startups and companies operating across various segments of artificial intelligence technology.
Of this amount, $1.75 billion is earmarked for seed- and early-stage projects. Another $4 billion will go to companies that have already entered the scaling phase.
What Bessemer Venture Partners Will Invest the Funds In
Bessemer Venture Partners is a well-known investor in the software-as-a-service sector. Over the years, the firm has backed Anthropic, Cognition, Legora, Perplexity, Ramp, Shopify, and Waymo. Its previous investments have also included Box, DocuSign, and Gainsight.
Since 2022, the fund has invested in more than 260 companies developing artificial intelligence-based products. Bessemer Venture Partners’ total investment in the sector has already reached $3 billion.
The firm’s portfolio includes projects developing computing infrastructure, foundation models, developer tools, applied solutions, and autonomous AI agents.
Bessemer Venture Partners views artificial intelligence as a major investment opportunity. Byron Deeter, a partner at the firm, said startups in this field are developing faster than projects in any other technology category the firm has supported.
Companies built on artificial intelligence are scaling faster than those in any technology category we have supported before.
Deeter also noted that venture capital firms need to increase the amount of capital available. According to him, startups remaining private for longer has become a lasting structural change in the venture capital market.
How the Capital Will Be Divided Between the Funds
Bessemer Venture Partners’ new funds will allocate capital as follows:
$1.75 billion – a fund for investing in seed- and early-stage startups.
$4 billion – a fund for companies in the growth and scaling stage.
$5.75 billion – the total capital of the two new funds.
In this way, Bessemer Venture Partners is expanding its presence in the artificial intelligence sector while continuing to fund both young startups and companies ready for large-scale growth.
- Accel raised $5 billion to back late-stage and AI-focused companies, allocating $4B to a Leaders Fund and $650M to a sidecar vehicle to scale portfolio firms like Anthropic and Perplexity.
- Snorkel AI raised $350 million, lifting its valuation to $3.5 billion as demand for specialized AI training data accelerates revenue growth.
- Andreessen Horowitz, known as a16z, has expanded its fifth growth fund to $8.5 billion as AI startups reach scale faster and require more capital.
