Founded in 1972 by Eugene Kleiner, Thomas Perkins, Frank J. Caufield and Brook Byers, Kleiner Perkins was the first venture capital firm to set up on Sand Hill Road — and is credited with creating the cluster of VC firms there. Headquartered at 2750 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, with offices in San Francisco and Shanghai, the firm has partnered with founders for five decades, backing them from inception to IPO and beyond. The New York Times once called it "perhaps Silicon Valley's most famous venture firm", and with around US$21 billion in assets under management (2026), it remains one of the largest and most established names in the business.

The firm's thesis spans consumer, enterprise, healthcare, financial services and hard tech, investing across seed, early-stage and growth rounds. Its stated mission is to be the first call for founders who want to make history, partnering with them as company builders — a philosophy built on an ethos of moral compass, empathy, humility and a winning mindset, as set out on the firm's own site. Partners today include chairman John Doerr, Al Gore, Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman.

  • Google — a $12 million stake taken in 1999, one of the greatest venture bets ever
  • Amazon.com — an $8 million early investment that returned in excess of $1 billion
  • Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Genentech and Electronic Arts — era-defining technology winners
  • Twitter, Snap, Square and Figma — the modern consumer and enterprise wave
  • Anthropic, Waymo, Glean, Rippling, Harvey and Together AI — the firm's current AI-led portfolio

Fundraising has scaled with the firm's ambitions: KP XVIII raised $600 million in 2019, KP20 and Select II closed $1.8 billion in 2022, and KP21 with the growth fund Select III launched in 2024. In 2026 the firm announced KP22, a $1 billion early-stage fund, alongside $2.5 billion in growth funds, plus a $3.5 billion vehicle aimed at artificial intelligence startups reshaping software, healthcare, transportation and autonomy. Earlier landmark programmes include the iFund ($100 million for iPhone apps, 2008) and the sFund ($250 million for social startups, 2010).

Why it matters for founders

Kleiner Perkins offers something few firms can: five decades of pattern recognition across technology cycles, from semiconductors to AI. Its "company builder" posture means portfolio founders get operational support all the way from seed to IPO — and with dedicated early-stage funds like KP22 alongside multibillion-dollar growth vehicles, the firm can lead at the start and keep writing cheques as you scale.