SEC filings confirm Kleiner Perkins has raised two new funds totaling $1.4B
So much for losing its mojo. — Despite twists and turns in recent years that have sometimes rivaled those of a telenovela, and even with its most famous member, John Doerr, no longer a general partner …
Context & Ripple Effects
A month after CNBC reported Kleiner Perkins was out raising roughly $1.3 billion, SEC filings have confirmed the close: two new funds totaling $1.4B, landed even though John Doerr is no longer a general partner. That confirmation matters because it ends the open question of whether limited partners would keep backing the firm through its most turbulent stretch of partner turnover.
The raise sits inside a longer arc of rebuilds: the firm had already shrunk back to an early-stage focus after shutting down its KPCB Edge seed program when all three partners running it left, and it would later regroup again around a $600M fund raised after Mary Meeker's departure. Today's filing is the proof point that the franchise could still raise at scale without its most famous name.
First-order effects
- Limited partners are now committed to $1.4B across the two vehicles, giving Kleiner Perkins fresh dry powder for seed and Series A checks just as its fundraising was being questioned in the press.
- Doerr's absence from the general-partner roster stops being a fundraising liability on paper — the close demonstrates the firm can market funds on its track record rather than its founder.
Second-order effects
- Rival Sand Hill firms courting the same institutional LPs face a re-funded competitor at the early stage, where the firm's later KP19 vintage showed 30 of 34 KP18 investments were seed or Series A — concentration that puts pressure on peers' deal flow.
- Portfolio founders gain a credible follow-on source inside one franchise, tightening competition among investors offering both first checks and later-stage support.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — contraction after each partner exodus, then re-expansion — the firm's trajectory points toward the much larger vehicles it ultimately raised, including the $3.5B pair that pushed AUM past $21B, suggesting legacy VC brands can survive leadership turnover intact.
- For the industry, the episode reinforces that LP commitment decisions hinge less on any single rainmaker than on a firm's ability to regenerate a partnership around its core stage focus.
The trend: Legacy venture franchises like Kleiner Perkins are cycling through contraction and re-expansion as founding partners step back, with fund sizes resetting downward after departures before climbing again.