Boulder-based venture capital firm Foundry Group just closed on a record $500 million fund for growth stage investments in companies the group has already worked with, as well as investment in new startups, TechCrunch reported.
The 10-year-old company's sixth round of venture, called Foundry Group Next, comes shortly after the firm closed on a $225 million fund in summer 2015.
Historically, Foundry Group has backed early stage startups, and their 2015 fund will continue that effort. But Foundry Group will use this new round of funding for a couple new initiatives.
Some of the $500 million fund will be used to make growth investments in the most successful companies from their early-stage investment rounds. These funds will provide the startups with much-needed capital during scaling — or accelerated growth.
Foundry Group will also use some to fund growth-stage investments in new companies, a move the firm has never taken.
And 25 percent of the funds will go to investing in other venture capital — also new for Foundry.
The Foundry Group team took to blogging to explain their new approach. Brad Feld, Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, Jason Mendelson and Lindel Eakman — the newest partner — explained that their previous early-stage investing strategy prevented them from capitalizing on the work they had already started.
And investment in venture capital partnerships will enable them to strengthen relationships with other funds and enable Foundry to fund companies from those portfolios.
Foundry has previously invested in companies as big as Fitbit, Boulder-based Gnip and DataHero. Its most recent investments went to Beeswax and Denver-based FullContact, which just this summer raised $25 million in funding led by Foundry.
Multimedia business & healthcare reporter Chloe Aiello can be reached via email at [email protected] or twitter.com/chlobo_ilo.
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