|
Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley's most respected venture capital firms (backer of Google, Yahoo, and many others) has raised $413 million of fresh cash to invest in new companies.
Sequoia has been investing rapidly. In the latest announcement today, Sequoia has joined Lehman Brothers to pump $7 million more into Kontera, an "in-text" ad company -- it automatically turns online words within an article into a link that points to relevant ads.
Meanwhile, Sequoia's fund could be enlarged to $445 million, according to VentureWire (sub required), which cites a regulatory filing dated June 8. We reported earlier (scroll down) that the fund was in the works, and that Sequoia had decided to kick out so-called fund-of-funds from investing (the firm hasn't confirmed any of this, we're just going off reports we've read). That the fund was raised so quickly suggests Sequoia had no problem doing so, and could herald change in the industry. Fund of funds are competing against an ever larger number of investors (download today's report from Private Equity Intelligence) struggling to place their money with folks like Sequoia.