In Staggering Sign Of Venture Spending Growth, Insight Partners Closes $20B+ Fund

A decade ago, $20 billion would have been enough to fund roughly a third of all global venture funding for an entire year. Today, it’s the sum that just a single investor racked up for a single fund.

This morning, software-focused growth investor Insight Partners announced it raised over $20 billion for its 12th flagship fund. That’s more than twice the size of the 11th flagship fund, which closed about two years ago with $9.5 billion and ranks among the largest funds ever.

In recent quarters, New York-headquartered Insight has shown it’s adept at putting copious quantities of capital to work. The firm has made 50 investments so far this year, per Crunchbase data. Of those, at least 35 are as lead or co-lead investor, including a $170 million round for elder care provider A Place For Mom, a $160 million Series B for life science upstart Iterative Scopes, and an  $80 million Series C for no-code robotics platform Wandelbots.  

The firm ranked as the second most active global investor in early- and late-stage venture rounds in 2021. Altogether, Insight backed 164 early- through late-stage portfolio companies last year, per Crunchbase data, up from 78 in 2020. That does not include deals at other stages, private equity and secondary market transactions among them, in which the firm also participated. Across all deal types, Insight’s total comes to 245 investments in 2021.

Exits also populate Insight’s portfolio. Some of the more prominent names that have gone public in the past year include SentinelOne, Darktrace, Udemy, and Nextdoor.

Insight’s focus areas include high-growth technology, software and internet startups, and growth-stage companies. The firm said its flagship funds typically invest between $5 million and $500 million-plus in a company, with the ability to invest from the earliest stages to pre-IPO financings.

In addition to its New York headquarters, Insight also has offices in London, Tel Aviv and Palo Alto. The closing of the new fund, the firm said, brings assets under management to over $90 billion.

Illustration: Dom Guzman