Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
Spark Capital
A Boston-born, now Boston/New York/San Francisco partnership founded in 2005 that made its name co-investing with Union Square Ventures in Twitter and Tumblr. It stayed deliberately small and collegial, added a growth fund in 2014, and in 2023 led Anthropic's Series C, the bet that now dominates its returns and its fundraising.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2005, Boston, Massachusetts
- Founders
- Santo Politi (ex-Charles River Ventures), Todd Dagres (ex-Battery Ventures), Paul Conway; Bijan Sabet (ex-Moviefone/AOL) joined at the start and is usually counted as a founding partner
- Headquarters
- Offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston; the centre of gravity moved from Boston to New York and San Francisco after ~2012
- Ownership / structure
- Private partnership (Spark Capital Partners, LLC); paired closed-end funds: early-stage "Spark Capital" funds and "Spark Capital Growth" funds
- Leadership (2026)
- Flat general-partner group with no single managing partner. GPs reported to include Nabeel Hyatt, Alex Finkelstein, Kevin Thau, Yasmin Razavi, Will Reed and Jeremy Philips (verify current roster). Co-founders Todd Dagres and Bijan Sabet stepped back from active investing in 2021–22; Santo Politi's current role should be verified
- AUM / capital raised
- ~$8bn+ in cumulative commitments across early and growth funds (sum of reported fund sizes); third-party profiles cite "$12–15bn" of AUM including unrealised gains (reported). New funds announced in 2026: ~$2.3bn across Spark Capital VIII and Spark Growth V, against a reported ~$3bn target (verify)
- Stage focus
- Series A and B lead investing (early funds); Series B to late-stage growth (growth funds), mostly in companies the firm did not back earlier
- Signature investments
- Twitter, Tumblr, Oculus VR, Cruise, Plaid, Affirm, Deel, Discord, Coinbase, Slack, Carta, Postmates, Anthropic; failures and disappointments: Veoh (2010 liquidation), Cybereason (sold 2025 far below its 2021 private valuation), Cruise after GM (robotaxi programme wound down 2024)
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.
2006
Veoh
Early Venture
2007
Tumblr
Series A
2008
Twitter
Series B
2013
Oculus VR
Series A
2013
Plaid
Seed
2015
Affirm
Growth Round
2015
Cruise
Series A
2015
Cybereason
Series B
2020
Deel
Series B
2023
Anthropic
Series C