Bessemer Venture Partners has closed $5.75 billion in new capital. It’s one of the largest venture raises of 2026, in a year when many firms have struggled to close funds at all. The money splits two ways: $1.75 billion for seed and early-stage investing, and $4 billion for growth rounds.
That split says a lot. Bessemer is betting that the best AI companies will need a great deal of capital after they find product-market fit. It also thinks they’ll stay private long enough to use it. Partner Byron Deeter calls companies staying private longer “a permanent structural shift.” He also says “AI-native companies are scaling faster than any category of technology we’ve backed before.”
An AI book already in place
Since 2022, Bessemer has backed more than 260 AI companies and put over $3 billion to work across the stack: compute, infrastructure, foundation models, developer platforms, applications and agents. About 70% of its investments still happen at the early stage.
The growth portfolio already includes Anthropic, Cognition, Legora, Ramp, ClickHouse, fal, EliseAI, EvenUp, ShopMy, DriveNets and Waymo. Earlier-stage names include Perplexity, Abridge and Wonderful. Before AI, Bessemer made its name on cloud software, with early calls on Shopify, Toast, Twilio, Box, DocuSign and Canva.
The firm by the numbers
After this close Bessemer manages about $20 billion. It counts more than 155 IPOs and 450+ active portfolio companies. It invests from offices in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, London, Bangalore and Tel Aviv.
Partner Jeremy Levine summed up the firm’s playbook: spot the technology shift early and back exceptional founders through every stage. With $4 billion earmarked for growth, Bessemer can now keep writing checks to its AI winners long after the seed round.