Primary Businesses has closed a $625 million Fund V focused on seed investments nationwide, which is quite a large capital for a company that focuses exclusively on early-stage investments. Perhaps it shows how the size of early stage rounds has increased dramatically in the age of artificial intelligence.
Ben Sun, co-founder and general partner of Primary Ventures, told TechCrunch that the average check size for this fund will be between $5 million and $10 million, and he hopes the firm will invest in 40 to 50 companies over three years. He said the fund will also go as early as pre-seed.
The fund will also continue to expand its investments across the country. Primary is one of New York’s best-known venture capital firms, and at one point, most of its investments were focused on the Big Apple. Sun said the location of the position has changed.
The firm, which overall focuses on early-stage investments, now has deals in SF, Chicago, Seattle, VA and D.C. “The talent, the founder and the startups are happening everywhere,” he said. “The potential outcomes are much greater than they’ve ever been.”
He sees startup investments heading into their own asset class, especially as the quality of their talent and startups continues to rise, coupled with the ongoing transformation of technology. Companies compete, after all, to find the hottest deals. “Think [a fund of this size] it allows you to participate and compete and bring more resources to the table to work with the best founders and opportunities.”
Sequoia also recently raised a $200 million seed round, as did Uncork Capital, which announced a $225 million seed fund earlier last year.
Although Primary calls itself generalist, Sun said the company has domain specialists, each with their own focus. It likes the consumer but also has investors focused on verticals AI, fintech, healthcare, enterprise, cyber security and infrastructure. “We cover almost 80% or 90% of the seed business out there.”
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Fund V has already invested in three companies. Primary previously raised $60 million in Fund I when it launched in 2015, followed by $100 million in Fund II and $150 million in Fund III.
It raised a $275 million fund and an additional $163 million for an opportunity fund. Some of its investments include AI chip company Etched, risk management platform Alloy, women’s networking hub Chief and AI marketplace Dandelion Health. It has $1.65 billion in assets under management.
This piece has been updated to add SF as one of the company’s markets.
