The Rise Of Megafunds — A Decade In The Making

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series looking at how the venture and startup landscape has evolved over the past 10 years. Read about how the industry has doubled over the decade, as well as articles about seed funding and Series B trends of the past 10 years.

The paradox of venture capital has long been that while VCs fixate on finding scalable businesses, their own asset class does not scale especially well.

Put 10x the money into venture investing, and you probably won’t produce tenfold the number of Facebook-like outcomes. Instead, you’ll likely see a few more hits, coupled with more competition for deals, bigger valuations and higher burn rates as startups face more funded rivals.

That scalability paradox, however, hasn’t prevented venture firms from growing ever-bigger over time. While venture funds exceeding the $1 billion mark were once a rarity, they’re now comparatively commonplace. Over the years, the amount of capital under management by the most famous firms has also grown tremendously.

Just how big are we talking? To get a sense how venture firms have swelled over time, we used Crunchbase data to illustrate the amount of money going to the largest U.S. venture and venture growth funds ($500 million and up) over the past 10 years.

As you can see, venture megafunds were closing on ever-rising sums of capital right up through 2022. Fundraising then slowed sharply, as venture valuations hit a rough patch. Moreover, many leading names still had plentiful dry powder raised during bubblier times.

However, megafunds staged a comeback last year, with fundraising in 2024 up more than 60% year over year. So far in 2025, it looks like investment in megafunds is relatively flat with year-ago levels.

Who raised the most

Of course, some megafunds are a lot larger than others.

To illustrate just how large some have gotten, below we charted the largest fund of the year from 2015 through 2025.

Many of the largest funds charted above do a mix of venture and growth investment. This, for example, is the strategy for 4x list leader Insight Partners. And General Catalyst, which raised last year’s largest fund, backs mostly venture deals, but also some debt and secondary investments.

Notably, our list does leave off some prominent funds. We did not include SoftBank Vision Fund, for example, because fund overseer SoftBank Investment Advisors is based in London. We also left out Sequoia Capital Fund, which had raised nearly $19.6 billion per a February securities filing, because it is structured as an evergreen fund.

Firms also raise huge sums across multiple funds

It’s also not uncommon for a venture firm to announce closing of several large funds in the same year, and often at the same time.

Accel, for instance, raised $2.95 billion across general and regionally focused funds in 2016, while Sequoia Capital closed on over $4 billion across funds in 2017 and over $7.6 billion in 2018.

During the peak fundraising year of 2022, totals headed even higher. Andreessen Horowitz closed on more than $14 billion across funds, while Lightspeed Venture Partners picked up over $6.5 billion.

Now the hard part is finding deals — and exits

As a result of all these years of mega-fundraising, the venture asset class is looking pretty well capitalized. As evidenced by the enormous rounds raised by generative AI leaders, there’s plenty of cash available for those who make the cut.

With a reviving but still-sluggish IPO market, and an M&A environment that is as-of-yet unable to make much of a dent in the large pipeline of still-private unicorns, the challenge ahead will be delivering exits.

For a long time, venture investors have waited patiently as the typical age of startups entering the public markets has grown older. So far, that doesn’t appear to have led to diminished appetite for investors in venture funds. It’s unclear, however, how long this might continue.