# Greylock Partners

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/greylock_partners
> Updated: 2026-06-07
> Categories: AI Companies, Venture Capital
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

**Greylock Partners** is one of the oldest venture capital firms in the United States, founded in 1965 and now based in Menlo Park, California, where it concentrates on early-stage investments in enterprise and consumer software. Over six decades the firm has backed companies including [LinkedIn](/wiki/linkedin), Facebook, Workday, [Palo Alto Networks](/wiki/palo_alto_networks), Airbnb, Figma, and Coinbase, and it has raised a series of seventeen funds. Since the late 2010s Greylock has reoriented much of its practice around artificial intelligence, co-founding the foundation-model company [Inflection AI](/wiki/inflection_ai) and leading or seeding application and infrastructure startups such as [Cresta](/wiki/cresta), Abnormal, [Baseten](/wiki/baseten), and Braintrust. Its best-known partner, [Reid Hoffman](/wiki/reid_hoffman), co-founded LinkedIn and Inflection AI and is one of Silicon Valley's most visible voices on AI investment and policy.

## History and founding

Greylock was founded in 1965 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by William Elfers and Dan Gregory, soon joined by Charlie Waite. Elfers and Waite had both worked at American Research and Development Corporation, the pioneering Boston venture-capital firm, before leaving to start a partnership of their own. The new firm began with about $10 million committed by six wealthy families, an arrangement typical of an era that predated the large institutional limited partners who fund venture firms today. Greylock raised its second fund in 1973.

During its early decades the firm invested heavily in the minicomputer boom of the late 1960s and 1970s, backing hardware and systems companies such as Data General and Prime Computer, the latter of which went public in 1974. Elfers built a reputation for a collegial, partnership-driven culture that he contrasted with more hierarchical investment organizations, and the firm gradually broadened from computing hardware into software, networking, and consumer internet businesses. By the firm's own count it has helped finance more than 300 technology companies over its history.

## Move to early-stage Silicon Valley

For most of its history Greylock was an East Coast firm, headquartered in the Boston area and later in Waltham, Massachusetts. It opened its first Silicon Valley office in 1999 as the center of gravity in technology investing shifted west. By the second half of the 2000s the California practice was driving the firm's highest-profile deals, and in 2009 Greylock moved its headquarters to Menlo Park, California. A separate Israeli and European team that had operated under the Greylock name spun out in January 2015 and rebranded as 83North, with its own $200 million fund.

The relocation accompanied a strategic narrowing. Greylock positioned itself as an early-stage firm focused on enterprise and consumer software, frequently leading seed and Series A rounds and in some cases incubating companies inside its own offices. Its assets under management have been reported at roughly $3.5 billion, deployed across a long line of partnerships, and the firm has financed companies that went on to large public listings and acquisitions.

## Notable partners

Greylock's modern reputation rests on a small group of partners. [David Sze](/wiki/david_sze) joined in 2000 and served as senior managing partner from 2012 to 2017. He led the firm's investments in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Pandora, sat on LinkedIn's board from 2004 through its 2011 IPO, and was a Facebook board observer from 2006 to 2012. He appeared on the Forbes Midas List in 2013 and 2014. Asheem Chandna, a long-tenured partner, has focused on enterprise, cybersecurity, and infrastructure software, areas where Greylock has been especially active for years.

Reid Hoffman joined Greylock as a partner in 2009, after co-founding LinkedIn and serving on the founding team of PayPal. He became the firm's most public figure and an influential early backer of artificial intelligence. Hoffman was an early investor in [OpenAI](/wiki/openai), and in 2022 he co-founded Inflection AI with his Greylock colleague [Mustafa Suleyman](/wiki/mustafa_suleyman), a co-founder of DeepMind, and the AI researcher Karen Simonyan. Hoffman also sat on the board of [Microsoft](/wiki/microsoft) from 2017. In June 2026 he disclosed, through a Microsoft regulatory filing, that he would not stand for re-election at the company's 2026 annual meeting, stepping down to focus on his AI drug-discovery startup Manas AI; the filing said the decision did not stem from any disagreement with management.

[Saam Motamedi](/wiki/saam_motamedi) has become the firm's leading AI investor. He became Greylock's youngest general partner in August 2019, focusing on AI, cybersecurity, and infrastructure software. Motamedi led or incubated several of Greylock's signature AI bets, including Abnormal, the cloud email-security company begun inside Greylock's offices in 2018, as well as Cresta and Braintrust. When the firm announced its seventeenth fund in 2023, Motamedi summarized its thesis by saying Greylock "expects that every company will become an AI company." Other current investing partners include Jerry Chen, Mike Duboe, Seth Rosenberg, Corinne Riley, Jason Risch, and Christine Kim.

## Funds

Greylock has raised a long series of partnerships, with fund sizes climbing as it concentrated on Silicon Valley. Public reporting and the firm's own disclosures put recent funds at roughly the following:

- Greylock 12 (2005): about $500 million
- Greylock 13 (2009): $575 million, later increased toward $1 billion in 2011
- Greylock 14 (2013): $1 billion
- Greylock 15 (2016): $1 billion
- Greylock 16 (2020): $1 billion, plus about $500 million earmarked for seed deals in 2021
- Greylock 17 (October 2023): $1 billion

Greylock 17, announced in October 2023, was a $1 billion fund aimed at pre-seed, seed, and Series A founders in enterprise and consumer software, with an explicit tilt toward AI-first companies in cybersecurity, infrastructure, fintech, and other categories. Alongside it the firm launched Greylock Edge, a program to work with founders at the pre-idea and pre-seed stages, offering flexible financing such as priced rounds or SAFE notes, introductions to early customers, and recruiting help. The firm has said the fund drew on a stable base of university endowments and nonprofit foundations built up over decades.

## AI portfolio

Greylock organizes its AI work into three buckets: AI applications, foundation models, and AI infrastructure. The degree of the firm's involvement varies widely across these companies, and the distinction matters. In foundation models, Greylock co-founded and invested in Inflection AI; it participated in [Adept](/wiki/adept_ai)'s $350 million Series B in 2023, a round co-led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital rather than by Greylock; and it lists OpenAI and [Anthropic](/wiki/anthropic) among its portfolio companies, though Hoffman's OpenAI exposure traces to his early personal support of that company more than to a firm-level round.

Inflection illustrates both the upside and the volatility of foundation-model investing. Founded in 2022 by Hoffman, Suleyman, and Simonyan, Inflection raised $1.3 billion in 2023 at a $4 billion valuation from backers including Microsoft, [Nvidia](/wiki/nvidia), Bill Gates, and former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, alongside Greylock. In March 2024 Microsoft licensed Inflection's technology and hired most of its roughly 70 employees, including Suleyman and Simonyan, in an arrangement worth about $650 million, reported as roughly $620 million for non-exclusive licensing and about $30 million tied to the hiring. Suleyman became chief executive of Microsoft AI. Hoffman had publicly promised a "good outcome" for Inflection's investors, and the licensing deal was framed as delivering one.

Greylock has more consistently been a lead investor in AI applications and infrastructure, where it often writes the first check. Its applications portfolio includes Cresta, a [generative AI](/wiki/generative_ai) platform for contact centers that spun out of the Stanford AI Lab; Abnormal, later rebranded Abnormal AI, in cloud email security; the document-automation company Instabase; the healthcare startups Notable and Mandolin; and a cluster of security and [AI agent](/wiki/ai_agents) companies such as 7AI, Cogent Security, and Netic. On the infrastructure side Greylock backs Baseten, a model-serving platform; Braintrust, an evaluation and testing stack for AI products, where Greylock led the seed round; Snorkel AI, a data-centric training company; and Modular. Several earlier infrastructure bets, including Gretel, Predibase, and Truera, have since been acquired.

The firm stayed active into 2025 and 2026. Greylock led Axiamatic's $54 million Series A for enterprise transformation and participated in Cogent Security's $42 million Series A for AI-driven vulnerability remediation, and it continued adding companies such as the financial-crime automation startup Bretton AI, which raised a Series B in February 2026. Hoffman's own AI activity now extends beyond the firm: in early 2025 he co-founded Manas AI with the oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author [Siddhartha Mukherjee](/wiki/siddhartha_mukherjee) to apply machine learning to cancer drug discovery. Manas raised $24.6 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst and Hoffman, with participation from Greylock, and partnered with Microsoft's Azure cloud. Hoffman's June 2026 decision to leave the Microsoft board was tied to his plan to devote more time to Manas.

### Notable AI investments

| Company | Round / Year | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Inflection AI | Founding 2022; $1.3B round 2023 | Co-founder via Hoffman and Suleyman; investor |
| Abnormal (Abnormal AI) | Initial financing, 2018 | Lead investor; incubated at Greylock |
| Cresta | Early rounds, from about 2020 | Early investor (Motamedi) |
| Braintrust | Series Seed | Lead investor |
| Baseten | Multiple rounds | Investor |
| Adept | Series B, 2023 ($350M) | Participating investor; round led by others |
| OpenAI | Early stage | Listed in portfolio; Hoffman early personal investor |
| Anthropic | Portfolio listing | Listed in Greylock's AI portfolio |
| Axiamatic | Series A, 2025 ($54M) | Lead investor |
| Cogent Security | Series A, 2025 ($42M) | Participating investor |
| Bretton AI | Series B, February 2026 | Investor |
| Manas AI | Seed, 2025 ($24.6M) | Participating investor; co-founded by Hoffman |

## Notable investments and exits

Across its history Greylock's largest returns have come from consumer internet and enterprise software rather than AI, though the two now overlap. The firm was an early investor in LinkedIn and Facebook, both through David Sze, and counts Airbnb, Workday, Palo Alto Networks, Coinbase, Discord, Dropbox, Figma, Okta, Roblox, and Rubrik among its better-known holdings and exits. Greylock has reported more than 350 portfolio exits over its lifetime, a record that places it alongside peers such as [Sequoia Capital](/wiki/sequoia_capital) and [Andreessen Horowitz](/wiki/andreessen_horowitz) among the most established venture firms in the United States. The firm's current pitch to founders folds that history into an AI-first message: it argues that software companies of every kind are becoming AI companies, and it has concentrated its newest fund and its Greylock Edge program on backing those teams at the earliest stages.

## References

- [Greylock Partners, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylock_Partners)
- [Reid Hoffman, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Hoffman)
- [Inflection AI, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection_AI)
- [David Sze, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sze)
- [Greylock, AI portfolio page (official)](https://greylock.com/ai/)
- [Saam Motamedi, Greylock team page (official)](https://greylock.com/team/saam-motamedi/)
- [Greylock secures $1B for its 17th fund amid launch of early-stage founders program, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/03/greylock-1b-venture-capital-founders-program/)
- [Greylock Closes New $1B Fund To Invest In Earliest-Stage Startups, Crunchbase News](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/greylock-new-fund-investing/)
- [Greylock wraps up latest $1B fund, PitchBook](https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/greylock-wraps-up-latest-1b-fund)
- [Microsoft hires Inflection founders to run new consumer AI division, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/19/microsoft-hires-inflection-founders-to-run-new-consumer-ai-division/)
- [Why Microsoft's surprise deal with $4 billion startup Inflection is the most important non-acquisition in AI, Fortune](https://fortune.com/2024/03/19/microsoft-surprise-deal-inflection-ai-mustafa-suleyman-reid-hoffman-questions/)
- [Microsoft Pays Inflection AI $650 Million, Hires Most of its Staff, DeepLearning.AI The Batch](https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/microsoft-pays-inflection-ai-650-million-hires-most-of-its-staff)
- [Adept, a startup training AI to use existing software and APIs, raises $350M, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/15/adept-a-startup-training-ai-to-use-existing-software-and-apis-raises-350m/)
- [Reid Hoffman launches Manas AI, a new drug discovery startup, CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/02/reid-hoffman-launches-manas-ai-a-new-drug-discovery-startup.html)
- [Reid Hoffman's Manas AI raises $24.6M, a fraction of other AI drug discovery startups, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/27/reid-hoffmans-manas-ai-raises-24-6m-a-fraction-of-other-ai-drug-discovery-startups/)
- [Our Investment in Manas AI, General Catalyst](https://www.generalcatalyst.com/stories/our-investment-in-manas-ai)
- [LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman leaving Microsoft board after almost a decade, CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/linkedin-co-founder-reid-hoffman-leaving-microsoft-board-after-decade.html)
- [LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman to Leave Microsoft's Board, Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-05/linkedin-co-founder-reid-hoffman-to-leave-microsoft-s-board)
- [LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman to leave Microsoft board after nearly a decade, GeekWire](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/linkedin-co-founder-reid-hoffman-to-leave-microsoft-board-after-nearly-a-decade/)