Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed Venture Partners was founded in 2000 to invest in technology companies, expanding from early-stage venture capital into the growth stage. The firm’s history records that it expanded to offices in India, China, and Israel in 2006, entered Europe in 2019, and further expanded into Southeast Asia and Latin America in 2020. The historical brand and regional network are not the same as all assets currently managed by the same investment adviser.⁠[2][1]

Nutanix develops enterprise infrastructure combining compute, storage, and virtualization. A 2012 company announcement recounted that its Series A raised $13.3 million in July 2010 and its Series B raised $25.3 million in August 2011. In a ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry interview at its 2016 IPO, Lightspeed’s initial investment was described as $10 million, with $3.7 million from Fund VII and $6.3 million from Fund VIII, and its cumulative investment thereafter as about $40 million. The amounts in that report correspond to Lightspeed’s investment; the company’s funding rounds included all participants.⁠[3][4]

Lightspeed took part in Snap’s seed-stage investment. Forbes reported that the firm led a $485,000 seed financing in 2012, with Jeremy Liew responsible for this consumer internet investment. Snap built its product identity around photo and short video communication. Its early investment and its post-IPO share dispositions belong to different investment stages.⁠[5]

Lightspeed’s website lists the starting point of its Nicira investment as the 2011 Series C. Nicira worked on software-defined networking; VMware announced the acquisition agreement in July 2012 and completed the transaction on August 24. The actual closing disclosed about $1.095 billion in cash and unvested equity awards with a fair value of about $168 million, a different basis from the signing-time estimate of $1.05 billion in cash plus about $210 million in awards. Unvested employee awards also cannot all be counted as cash received by shareholders at the time.⁠[6][7][8]

Lightspeed’s website lists the starting point of its support for smart home company Nest as the 2011 Series B. On January 13, 2014, Google announced an agreement to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion in cash, planning to keep the team led by Tony Fadell and the Nest brand. The $3.2 billion is the announced amount of the entire acquisition and cannot be treated as proceeds to Lightspeed alone.⁠[9][8]

Google’s annual report confirmed that the Nest acquisition was completed in February 2014, presenting a purchase price of $2.6 billion under acquisition accounting and separately listing the fair value of previously held interest at $152 million. Google had previously held about 12% of Nest. The accounting purchase price, the announced total transaction value, and settlement proceeds to fund shareholders are measured on different bases.⁠[10]

Guardant Health develops liquid biopsies that analyze cancer genetic information through blood draws. On February 3, 2015, the company announced a Series C of about $50 million, led by Lightspeed with participation from Formation 8, Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry, Sequoia, and others; the announcement said cumulative funding was under $100 million. The website directory lists the start of support as 2014; the announcement date should not be conflated with the investment year, nor can the entire $50 million round be attributed to Lightspeed alone.⁠[11][8]

Rubrik started out in enterprise backup and recovery. In a March 24, 2015, article, Lightspeed explicitly described the $10 million Series A as its own investment; its website project card records the start of support as 2014, so the announcement date differs from the start of the investment. Co-founder Bipul Sinha was previously a Lightspeed partner, and Ravi Mhatre took part in the investment and serves as a director. In May of the same year, Rubrik announced a $41 million Series B led by Greylock, in which Lightspeed continued to participate.⁠[12][13]

Nutanix’s final prospectus offered 14.87 million shares at $16 per share. Based on the shareholder table as of August 31, 2016, Lightspeed-affiliated funds held 27,978,979 shares, 22.7% before the offering and, under that offering plan, 20.3% after the offering with 22.4% of voting power; of these, Fund VII held 10,352,222 shares and Fund VIII held 17,626,757 shares. The table also noted that it did not include 625,478 shares issued to the affiliated funds after August 31 in connection with the Pernix acquisition. The share counts in the table are therefore not complete holdings at all later points in time.⁠[14]

Snap’s final prospectus set the offering price at $17 per share. Before the offering, Lightspeed was listed with 43,314,760 Class A and the same number of Class B common shares, totaling 86,629,520 shares. The base offering included its sale of 4,632,890 Class A shares, leaving 38,681,870 Class A shares and 43,314,760 Class B shares after the offering. The prospectus also had an over-allotment arrangement; the shares proposed for sale do not prove that all arrangements were ultimately carried out, and the market value of holdings calculated at the IPO price is not profit already received by the funds.⁠[15]

Lightspeed’s website records the start of its MuleSoft investment as the 2007 Series B; the company provides API and data integration software to businesses. Its March 16, 2017, final prospectus offered 13 million new shares at $17 per share, for total company proceeds of $221 million, with an additional over-allotment option for 1.95 million shares. These proceeds belonged to the issuer and cannot be treated as Lightspeed’s share sale proceeds.⁠[16][8]

Lightspeed has backed application performance management company AppDynamics since its 2008 Series A. Cisco’s financial reports record that the acquisition was actually completed on March 17, 2017, with a completion announcement issued on March 22. The announced figure of about $3.7 billion included cash and assumed equity awards, while the purchase consideration in the financial reports was $3.258 billion, including cash and vested awards. The two amounts are on different bases and cannot substitute for each other.⁠[17][18][8]

A management case study published by Lightspeed centers on three tasks—hiring, retention, and revenue—describing the building of the enterprise sales team, customer success, and organizational management, and reviewing the public company readiness process led by David Wadhwani. The operating work described in the article was carried out by the company’s management team, while Lightspeed took part in its development as an early investor.⁠[19]

Salesforce announced its acquisition of MuleSoft on March 20, 2018, and completed it on May 2. The agreement’s per-share consideration was $36 in cash plus 0.0711 shares of Salesforce stock, with an announced enterprise value of about $6.5 billion. MuleSoft disclosed that, as of March 28, Lightspeed-affiliated parties held 14,019,523 Class B shares, including 10,847,715 shares held by Fund VII and 3,171,808 shares held by the Select fund. This is a pre-closing holdings filing, and the full actual settlement amount cannot be calculated simply by multiplying it out.⁠[20][21][22]

On October 3, 2018, Guardant Health priced its IPO at $19 per share, with a base offering of 12.5 million shares, all newly issued by the company. On October 9, it actually completed the issuance of 14.375 million shares, including the over-allotment, and its financial reports record net proceeds of about $249.5 million after underwriting discounts and offering expenses. These were company financing, not Lightspeed exit proceeds.⁠[23][24]

Sales enablement software company Seismic announced a $100 million Series E on December 18, 2018, co-led by Lightspeed and T. Rowe Price. John W. Thompson joined its board. The company is a different entity from immunology drug developer Seismic Therapeutic, and their businesses, founding dates, and funding rounds should be recorded separately.⁠[25]

On November 13, 2019, Mirantis announced that it had acquired the Docker Enterprise Platform business, including enterprise products, technology, and related personnel. The scope of the transaction was Docker’s enterprise platform business and cannot be interpreted as the acquisition of the entire Docker company or the sale of all of Lightspeed’s shares in Docker.⁠[26]

Lightspeed has backed Forty Seven since its 2015 seed stage. The company translated immuno-oncology research into drug development programs and went public in 2018. Gilead announced on March 2, 2020, a cash acquisition at $95.50 per share for a total equity value of about $4.9 billion, completing it on April 7. The amount received by Lightspeed alone cannot be substituted with the consideration for the entire company.⁠[27][28][8]

In April 2020, Lightspeed announced three funds: Fund XIII at $890 million, Select IV at $1.83 billion, and an Opportunity fund at $1.5 billion, totaling $4.22 billion. The different vehicles cover the early, follow-on, and more mature stages; fundraising commitments are not the same as completed investments in companies.⁠[29]

Payments and merchant marketing platform Fivestars completed its acquisition by SumUp on October 28, 2021, and issued a completion announcement on November 10. Total consideration was $317 million, consisting of cash and stock. Lightspeed was one of its investors; after the acquisition, the Fivestars team continued to run its merchant services business.⁠[30]

On February 9, 2022, Seismic Therapeutic announced its launch and a $101 million Series A, led by Lightspeed with participation from Timothy Springer, Polaris, GV, and others. The company applies machine learning, structural biology, and protein engineering to immunology drug development. The website directory lists Lightspeed’s year of support as 2021; the public launch date is not the same as the date of the first investment.⁠[31][8]

On June 23, 2022, Pine Labs announced its acquisition of financial API infrastructure company Setu. Setu connects banks and financial product services to other applications through software interfaces. Lightspeed’s project details use the acquirer, Pine Labs, as the display name, but the 2018 founding, the founders Sahil Kini and Nikhil Kumar, and the acquired business described there all refer to Setu; this investment relationship corresponds to Setu.⁠[32]

The LSVP funds announced in July 2022 included XIV-A/B totaling $1.98 billion, Select V at $2.26 billion, and Opportunity II at $2.36 billion, for a combined $6.6 billion. There was also a separate new Lightspeed India Partners fund of $500 million. Combining the fundraising of the two investment advisers yields $7.1 billion, but that combined figure cannot be described entirely as fundraising by the single management entity LSVP.⁠[33]

Magrolimab, the core development program of Forty Seven, continued to be advanced by Gilead after the acquisition. On February 15, 2024, Gilead announced a halt to new patient enrollment in all solid tumor studies and a reassessment of benefits and risks, with some patients who had obtained clinical benefit able to continue treatment. The earlier successful completion of the acquisition and the subsequent drug development results are two different facts, and the acquisition price does not indicate that the drug candidate was ultimately approved.⁠[34]

Rubrik’s final prospectus set the offering price at $32 per share, offering 23.5 million Class A common shares. Under the base offering, Lightspeed-affiliated funds held 38,984,426 Class B shares, about 25.6% of Class B and about 25.4% of total voting power. These percentages have different denominators and do not indicate that Lightspeed had sold shares for cash.⁠[35]

Roofstock and Mynd announced their merger on May 16, 2024, combining residential investment transactions and data with property management services. Mynd’s property management business continued to use its brand. Lightspeed’s directory retains both historical investment records; they should not simply be counted as two unrelated existing groups.⁠[36]

In a public report in September 2024, Venture Capital Journal recounted that Lightspeed had invested about $580 million over the previous three years through its Opportunity growth funds to purchase secondary stakes in private companies. Secondary investments buy shares from existing shareholders, with the money usually paid to the sellers, which differs in nature from subscribing for new shares in a company financing. The historical cumulative figure in the report cannot be treated as new investment in later years.⁠[37]

On May 28, 2025, DataStax confirmed that its acquisition by IBM had been completed. The company provides technology related to real-time data, vector databases, and generative AI applications. After the acquisition, DataStax became a business of IBM. The announcement did not disclose the settlement amount for Lightspeed alone.⁠[38]

Lightspeed has backed corporate travel and expense management company Navan since its 2015 seed stage and took part in its later financings. On October 29, 2025, Navan priced its IPO at $25 per share, offering 36,924,406 shares, including 30 million new company shares and 6,924,406 existing shares from selling shareholders. The base offering totaled about $923.1 million, of which $750 million was new company shares and about $173.1 million was existing shares; the entire $923.1 million cannot be described as company fundraising or as Lightspeed’s proceeds.⁠[39][8]

On December 15, 2025, ServiceNow announced the completion of its acquisition of Moveworks, combining its employee service AI assistant, enterprise search, and reasoning technology with the ServiceNow platform. After closing, Moveworks became a business of ServiceNow. The acquisition announcement did not list the proceeds to each Lightspeed fund individually.⁠[41]

On February 4, 2026, Lightspeed announced its participation in the ElevenLabsElevenLabsElevenLabs is an artificial intelligence audio company founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski. Starting from voice generation, voice cloning, and dubbing tools, it has built ElevenCreative for creators, the enterprise conversational agent platform ElevenAgents, and the developer interface ElevenAPI, and also operates music generation and voice licensing businesses.Open the full entry Series D. Its investment article focused on ElevenLabs’s platform path from voice models to creative tools, developer interfaces, and enterprise conversational agents, citing improved voice interaction quality and expanding enterprise use cases as the basis for its investment thesis.⁠[42]

On March 11, 2026, Google announced the completion of its acquisition of Wiz; Wiz joined Google Cloud, keeping its brand and providing security services for multiple cloud environments. Lightspeed’s project directory records that it has backed Wiz since the 2023 Series D; after closing, Wiz became a business of Google.⁠[43][8]

Navan’s 2026 proxy statement, using March 31 as the record date for its shareholder table, listed Lightspeed-affiliated funds as holding a combined 49,921,454 Class A shares, about 21.2% of Class A and 7.2% of total voting power. These include Fund X, Affiliates X, Opportunity, Strategic Partners I, and Select II and III, among other funds; this is a record of holdings as of the disclosure date, and subsequent share changes are shown in the June transaction filings.⁠[44]

Lightspeed’s 13G/A records that, as of June 30, 2026, affiliated funds held a combined 7,144,060 Rubrik Class B shares, about 3.5% of all common stock. On July 10, five affiliated funds converted a combined 2,381,353 shares and distributed them pro rata to their partners without additional cash consideration; the filing lists a combined 4,762,707 Class B shares after the transaction. The same Form 4 also lists the management company’s sale of 3,979 Class A shares on July 13 at $83.10 per share. In-kind fund distributions, management company share sales, and the funds’ ultimate cash returns to investors must be identified separately.⁠[46][47]

On September 23, 2026, Enveda announced a $311 million Series E, with Lightspeed listed among the new participating investors.⁠[48]

On September 30, 2026, ElevenLabs announced that it had completed a $300 million employee tender offer that valued the company at $22 billion, double its Series D valuation in February, led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price. Lightspeed participated as an existing investor, alongside other existing investors including Alkeon, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry, D.E. ShawD. E. Shaw & Co.D. E. Shaw & Co. (the D. E. Shaw group) is a global investment and technology development firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1988 by computer scientist David E. Shaw, it was an early pioneer of computational finance and systematic investing, and its businesses span multi-strategy hedge funds, private markets, active equity and multi-asset class strategies. As of September 1, 2026, it had more than US$115 billion in investment and committed capital.Open the full entry, DISRUPTIVE, Evantic, and ICONIQ; BDT & MSD, EQTEQTEQT is a global private markets investment manager that originated in Sweden, with businesses spanning private capital, infrastructure, real estate, and secondaries. It was founded in 1994 by Conni Jonsson with the support of Investor AB, AEA Investors, and SEB, and listed in Stockholm in 2019; it has since expanded by integrating Exeter, LSP, Baring Private Equity Asia, and Coller Capital.Open the full entry, GICGICGIC is a long-term investment management institution wholly owned by the Government of Singapore, established in 1981 and headquartered in Singapore. It is entrusted with investing Singapore’s foreign reserves across equities, fixed income, private equity, real estate, and infrastructure, in order to preserve and enhance the reserves’ international purchasing power. The company is now named GIC Private Limited; its chairman is Lee Hsien Loong and its chief executive officer is Lim Chow Kiat.Open the full entry, Goldman SachsGoldman SachsGoldman Sachs is an American financial services group headquartered in New York whose businesses include investment banking, securities trading, asset management, and wealth management. It traces its origins to the commercial paper business Marcus Goldman founded in 1869; it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999 under the ticker GS and became a bank holding company in 2008. David Solomon serves as chairman and chief executive officer.Open the full entry, OTPPOntario Teachers' Pension PlanOntario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) is a defined benefit pension plan that provides lifetime pensions to working and retired teachers in Ontario, Canada. It is administered by the independent Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board and headquartered in Toronto. It is Canada’s largest single-profession pension plan and invests globally in public and private equity, fixed income, real estate, infrastructure, natural resources, credit and venture capital, with net assets of C$303.2 billion as of June 30, 2026.Open the full entry, and Sapphire Ventures invested in ElevenLabs for the first time. The amounts contributed by individual investors were not disclosed.⁠[49][49][49]

Lightspeed’s Lighthouse platform provides support including executive recruiting, organizational design, compensation, and pre-IPO board building; its business development services include design partner trials, introductions to potential customers, and cloud provider partnerships. Its founder network and Launch seed program provide networking, courses, and one-on-one support. These describe the range of services the firm offers; whether a particular portfolio company has adopted a given measure needs separate confirmation from company or case materials.⁠[50]

Lightspeed’s public portfolio spans enterprise software, consumer internet, fintech, healthcare, and other technology sectors. A company IPO usually brings tradable securities, and an acquisition may pay cash or stock; funds may also sell in private secondary transactions, transfer across funds, or distribute shares to partners. The lists below therefore record public investment relationships and businesses, and are not a table of all current holdings on a given date or a calculation of fund performance.⁠[8][45][47]