Greylock Raises $500 Million in Battle for Seed Deals

Greylock Partners has raised $500 million to focus exclusively on seed deals, a pool of funds that will give the 56-year-old venture capital firm the ability to write large checks at “lean-in valuations” and emphasize its commitment to early-stage investing, said general partner Sarah Guo.

The money is part of an expansion of a $1.1 billion fund, which Greylock announced last year, to $1.6 billion, Guo and general partner Saam Motamedi said in an interview. The funding is among the industry’s largest devoted to seed investments, which often represent a startup’s first outside capital.

The effort by the Menlo Park, Calif.–based firm, an early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn, follows large fundraising initiatives dedicated to seed-stage deals from Silicon Valley VC firms including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Firms like these are investing earlier to gain stakes that help them compete for future late-stage deals with Tiger Global Management and other nontraditional VC investors making inroads with founders.