Others in tech investing are also mulling how to counter the free-spending by the Japanese investment company
Call it the SoftBank Effect.
According to sources close to the situation, the high-profile venture capital firm Sequoia Capital is in the early of raising a third global growth fund that could range from $5 billion to $6 billion.
Sources said a numbers of other funds in Silicon Valley are also considering fundraises of this magnitude or even higher, prompted, in part, by the pressure to have larger pools of capital to deploy in the wake of SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund.
As Recode noted earlier this month, SoftBank Vision Fund is backed by tech giants including Apple, Qualcomm and Sharp, as well as by sovereign funds from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, making it the largest technology investment fund ever.
Leading rounds that include scratching out checks that start about $250 million (Slack) and head to $10 billion (Uber), its scale has reshaped Silicon Valley in 2017 — and, more to the point, irked the VC community.
“They have created a lot of tension between founders and their earlier investors, when they say take our giant wad of money or we will give it to your competition,” said one VC. “It’s made everyone else realize they need more capital, so that SoftBank is not the lead in every deal.”
That’s been one of the reasons for Sequoia’s giant raise, said sources, although the longer delay of a lot more startups in going public is another.
And Sequoia is definitely making an enormous leap from a previous $2 billion raise for its most recent global growth fund in 2015 that was disclosed in June
The Sequoia fundraising for the new global growth fund is in its exploratory discussions, said sources, so final numbers have not been determined. Its previous funds in this series have invested in companies like Airbnb, Stripe and Toutiao.