Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture capital firm with nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to close and not raise any more capital. The move was unexpected given that the company announced a $500 million fund last year.
Boulder, Colorado-based Foundry first announced that its current fund would be its last on January 19. The venture capital firm had been investing since 2007, according to Crunchbase, and had announced the $500 million fund, Foundry 2022 — the eighth — in May 2023.
Over the years, Foundry hectareshas invested in more than 200 companies and nearly 50 venture firms, according to co-founder and partner Seth Levine. It had backed Fitbit, Zynga and AvidXchange, among others.
When TechCrunch contacted Levine, he declined to comment on the company’s decision to shut down and instead pointed to the blogs he had written.
In one blogacknowledged that the company’s decision to shut down completely was unusual.
He wrote: “While VC firms rarely make decisions like this, it’s exactly what we planned to do when we started Foundry in 2006. From our inception, we deliberately decided not to build a legacy or generational company—one that was meant to outlive from the tenure of the founding partners. Instead, we intended to focus on the work of investing, re-evaluating each potential new fund as the pace of fundraising required…We’ve had several moments over the last decade where we thought the fund we were raising might be our last. Each of these times, after reflection and discussion, we decided to raise another fund. But not this time. Foundry 2022 will be our last fund.”
What’s next
Foundry still has 33% to 40% outside of that fund for investments, Levine told the Denver Business Journal. In his blog, Levine said specifically the firm plans to “continue to lead Series A and B financings” outside the fund.
The move raises questions about its portfolio companies. Foundry says it will continue to invest from its latest fund, but for founders, accepting capital from a defunct company is a risk and could make securing follow-on funding much more difficult.
Meanwhile, Levine kept her Denver Business Journal that it expects all funds to be used around 2026 and that the company “will continue to work with businesses in which it has investments.”
In his personal blogLevine wrote:We raised our last Foundry fund at a fortuitous time, just as the markets cooled (it’s a great time to invest) and we have another two years or so of new investments to wait. Not to mention a decade or more of portfolio work after that.”
The investor also told the Denver Business Journal that he would “be with Foundry until his work is done,” adding that co-founder Brad Feld and partner Chris Moody “intend to do the same.” He could not say what the other partners would “make” in the coming years.
In hers suspension Foundry partner Jaclyn Hester wrote that it was “fwe are focused on supporting our portfolio and leading new early-stage rounds as we grow the remainder of the 2022 fund over the coming years.”
Foundry isn’t the only venture capital firm that recently unexpectedly shut down. In December, Boston-based OpenView suddenly announced that it would stop investing in new companies less than a year later raising $570 million for her seventh fund.
Update: This article was updated after publication to reflect that there are no departures at the company as a result of the decision — voluntary or not, according to Levine
