Iconiq Growth, the venture arm of wealth management firm Iconiq Capital, has closed its seventh flagship fund on $5.75 billion, launching itself into the ranks of the elite VC firms that have raised mega-funds in 2024 despite a desolate LP fundraising environment.
The fund, which will invest from product market fit to the pre-IPO stage, is a 42% step-up from Iconiq’s $4.06 billion sixth fund. The raise, which bucks the fundraising slowdown, comes at the same time that venture growth-stage deals look to be making a comeback.
Like the rest of the industry, the venture arm’s LP base has gradually become increasingly institutional. Less than 20% of the fund is from Iconiq Capital’s network of wealth management clients, the firm told Fortune.
Despite its increasingly institutional bent, the firm still has an edge from the “network effect” in access to ultra-high-net-worth individuals in Silicon Valley: Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, among others, sit on Iconiq’s advisory council.
Growth-stage companies were some of the hardest hit after the bursting of the 2021 bubble, and in the years since, many VC firms have re-oriented their strategies away from the pre-IPO rounds that require significant capital infusions. Other growth-focused firms with particular exposure to the tech bubble have struggled to close upsized funds: Tiger Global, for example, closed its smallest VC fund in a decade in April.
Iconiq Growth’s latest fundraising process will have benefited from the firm’s earlier successes: Some of its most lucrative investments include a seed check for design company Figma and a 2015 round for B2B data analytics provider Datadog.
The firm rode the tech wave to the top: In 2021, the VC arm participated in 65 VC-backed deals totaling $18.37 billion in total deal value, according to PitchBook data. That includes having led eight- and nine-figure rounds for startups like productivity software provider Miro, cloud security startup Netskope and upskilling specialist BetterUp.
After the bubble burst, Iconiq Growth significantly scaled back its dealmaking pace in primary rounds. In 2023, the VC arm participated in 13 deals totaling less than $1 billion in capital.
But in the first six months of 2024, its dealmaking pace appears to be accelerating again: Iconiq participated in nine rounds which cumulatively raised $1.68 billion, including hot AI rounds like DeepL‘s $300 million raise and Glean‘s $200 million round at a $2.2 billion valuation.
Featured image by Jordan Lye/Getty Images
Learn more about our editorial standards.
