The Equation Series
Menu

Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)

The Menlo Park firm founded by two operator-entrepreneurs that rebuilt venture capital around a talent-agency-style platform, media and brand, then scaled into a multi-strategy, ~$90bn+ registered investment adviser spanning seed to growth, crypto, bio, American Dynamism and AI infrastructure.

At a glance

Founded
2009 (first fund closed July 2009), Menlo Park, California
Founders
Marc Andreessen (co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape and Opsware/Loudcloud) and Ben Horowitz (co-founder and CEO of Loudcloud/Opsware)
Headquarters
Menlo Park, CA (Sand Hill Road); offices/teams in San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Miami, London (a16z crypto, opened 2023); declared itself "cloud-first"/distributed after 2020
Ownership / structure
Private partnership owned by its general partners; registered with the SEC as an investment adviser (RIA) since 2019, which removes the 20% cap on non-qualifying (crypto, secondary, public) investments that applies to "venture capital fund" exempt advisers
Leadership (2026)
Co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (general partners and de facto co-heads); general partners running verticals including Chris Dixon (crypto), Katherine Boyle and others (American Dynamism), David George (growth), Martin Casado (infrastructure/AI), Alex Rampell and Anish Acharya (apps/fintech), Vijay Pande and Jorge Conde (bio + health) (verify current roster). Long-time managing partner Scott Kupor left in 2025 to become Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management
AUM / capital raised
~$35bn (2022) → ~$42bn+ (2023–24) → "more than $90bn" after the >$15bn raise announced January 2026 (some 2026 sources cite $100bn+; verify)
Stage focus
All stages: seed (incl. Speedrun accelerator), early venture (verticalised funds), growth (dedicated growth funds), plus crypto (incl. tokens), bio, AI infrastructure, American Dynamism and public/secondary positions
Signature investments
Skype, Facebook (secondary), Instagram (seed), Twitter, Airbnb, GitHub, Oculus, Slack, Lyft, Okta, Coinbase, Databricks, Stripe, Pinterest, Figma, Roblox, OpenAI (later rounds), Anduril, Flock Safety; instructive misses and failures: Zenefits, Clubhouse, BuzzFeed, Jet-era e-commerce bets, many 2021-vintage crypto and consumer marks, Flow (controversial, outcome open)

10 deals and moves analysed

Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.

  1. 2009

    Skype

    Carve-Out from eBay

  2. 2010

    Instagram

    Seed

  3. 2011

    Airbnb

    Series B

  4. 2012

    GitHub

    Series A

  5. 2013

    Coinbase

    Series B

  6. 2013

    Databricks

    Series A

  7. 2013

    Oculus

    Series B

  8. 2014

    Zenefits

    Series A

  9. 2020

    Clubhouse

    Series A

  10. 2022

    Flow

    Series A