# Insight Partners

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/insight_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.

**Insight Partners** (legally Insight Venture Management, LLC, and formerly Insight Venture Partners) is a New York based growth equity and venture capital firm that invests almost exclusively in software, internet, and technology businesses. Founded in 1995 by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock, the firm has grown into one of the largest dedicated software investors in the world, reporting more than $90 billion in regulatory assets under management as of December 31, 2025. Insight has backed more than 900 companies across its history and has seen over 55 of them reach an initial public offering. It is known for a distinctive operating model built around a large in-house team of analysts who source deals through direct outreach and an operating group, Insight Onsite, that works alongside the management teams of its portfolio companies. Insight invests across the full company life cycle, from early stage rounds to growth equity and buyouts, and in recent years has concentrated heavily on [artificial intelligence](/wiki/artificial_intelligence) and cybersecurity software.

## Founding and history

Insight Partners was founded in 1995 in New York City by Jeff Horing and Jerry Murdock. The two started the firm several years before the dotcom boom and bust of the early 2000s, at a time when investing specifically in business to business software was still unusual relative to the broader technology venture market. Horing previously worked at the private equity firm E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co. He holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and undergraduate degrees from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Murdock served as a managing director until April 2011 and is now retired from day to day investing, continuing in an advisory capacity to the firm.

Over three decades the firm built a reputation as a software specialist, expanding from a small New York operation into a global firm with offices that include New York, London, Tel Aviv, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The firm dropped "Venture" from its name, rebranding from Insight Venture Partners to Insight Partners, to reflect its broader mandate spanning venture, growth equity, and buyout style deals. By its 30th anniversary in 2025, Insight described itself as having invested in more than 900 companies worldwide.

In late 2024 and 2025 Insight disclosed a significant security incident. According to the firm and subsequent reporting, a threat actor used a social engineering attack to gain access to its systems on or around October 25, 2024, operated undetected for roughly 83 days, and began encrypting servers on January 16, 2025, in what the firm later confirmed was a ransomware attack. Insight notified affected individuals in 2025; reporting indicated the breach exposed personal data of current and former employees, limited partners, and certain fund and portfolio company information, affecting many thousands of people. The episode was notable given that Insight is itself a major investor in cybersecurity companies.

## Investment model and ScaleUp focus

Insight organizes its strategy around what it calls ScaleUps, software companies that have moved past initial product viability and are positioned for rapid, durable growth. The firm invests across three broad stages: early ScaleUps turning initial traction into exponential growth, growth stage companies, and later stage businesses that need capital and operational support to expand. This range lets Insight participate in venture rounds, large growth equity financings, and full buyouts within the same software focused mandate.

A defining feature of Insight is its sourcing engine. The firm hires analysts directly out of college and trains them in cold calling, market mapping, and relationship building. Reporting has indicated that a large share of the firm's venture deals, on the order of roughly 60 percent, originate from this internal sourcing team rather than from inbound opportunities or intermediaries. This high volume, research driven approach allows Insight to track thousands of private software companies and build relationships with founders well before a financing round.

Insight's investment philosophy emphasizes growth over restructuring. Rather than focusing on heavy cost cutting or turnarounds, the firm targets fundamentally healthy businesses and aims to accelerate revenue, product development, and market expansion. This orientation distinguishes its buyout activity from that of traditional leveraged buyout shops.

## Insight Onsite and portfolio operations

Insight Onsite is the firm's operating arm, a team of operational specialists that works directly with portfolio company executives. The group is built around what Insight describes as Centers of Excellence covering areas such as talent, product and technology, marketing, sales and customer success, business development, and strategy and mergers and acquisitions. These experts provide what the firm calls operating blueprints, offering hands on guidance in functions like hiring, pricing, go to market strategy, and acquisitions as companies scale.

Insight markets Onsite as a dual engine combining embedded operating expertise with access to its large portfolio network. With more than 800 active portfolio companies, that network is itself a resource, giving founders the ability to learn from peers facing similar scaling challenges. The operating model is central to how Insight differentiates itself from purely financial investors, positioning the firm as a partner in execution rather than only a source of capital.

## Funds and assets under management

Insight reports more than $90 billion in regulatory assets under management as of December 31, 2025. Its capital is organized into a series of numbered flagship funds alongside specialized vehicles for co-investment and structured equity.

The firm's largest fund to date was Fund XII, a flagship pool that closed at more than $20 billion. Insight began investing Fund XII in February 2021 and completed the fundraise in February 2022, at the peak of the technology investing cycle. That vintage proved challenging. As markets corrected, the fund's early performance was weak; according to public pension data cited in reporting, Fund XII was running roughly at break even, around a 1x total value multiple, with a slightly negative net internal rate of return as of early 2024. Insight was an active investor during the 2021 boom and backed some companies that later struggled, including the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Insight's next flagship, Fund XIII, reflected a more difficult fundraising environment. The firm initially set out with a much larger ambition, reportedly targeting around $20 billion, before scaling back its goals. In January 2025 Insight announced it had closed Fund XIII, together with a dedicated buyout co-invest fund and a structured equity vehicle called Opportunities Fund II, representing a combined $12.5 billion of new capital. Reporting at the time framed the raise as falling short of the firm's original target even as it remained one of the largest software focused funds in the market. The close coincided with the firm's 30th anniversary. Separately, in 2024 Insight used the secondary market to manage older holdings, with HarbourVest leading an approximately $1.5 billion continuation fund for a set of software assets.

## AI and software portfolio

Insight has positioned itself as one of the most active investors in [artificial intelligence](/wiki/artificial_intelligence) and [generative AI](/wiki/generative_ai). The firm has stated it invested roughly $4 billion into AI companies over a five year period, and it approaches the space across three layers: the modern data stack, machine learning operations, and generative AI applications. George Mathew, who joined Insight in 2021, leads much of the firm's AI investing; his first deal at the firm was a Series B in [Weights & Biases](/wiki/weights_and_biases).

On the infrastructure and tooling side, Insight backed [Run:ai](/wiki/run_ai), an Israeli company whose software helps orchestrate GPUs for AI workloads. Insight led Run:ai's Series B and co-led its $75 million Series C in March 2022 alongside Tiger Global. [Nvidia](/wiki/nvidia) agreed to acquire Run:ai for a reported $700 million in April 2024 and completed the deal in December 2024 after antitrust review in the United States and Europe, with Nvidia later moving to open source the software. Insight was also a backer of [Weights & Biases](/wiki/weights_and_biases), a machine learning operations platform used by developers including those at [OpenAI](/wiki/openai); the company was acquired by the AI cloud provider CoreWeave in a deal that completed in May 2025 at a valuation reported around $1.7 billion.

In generative AI applications, Insight led the $125 million Series A for Jasper, an AI content creation platform, in a round that closed shortly before the broad consumer launch of ChatGPT. The firm has also invested in data and AI platforms including [Databricks](/wiki/databricks), participating in a very large 2024 financing that valued the company at roughly $62 billion, as well as numerous MLOps and applied AI tools such as Astronomer, Acceldata, Fiddler AI, Tonic.ai, and Atlan.

Insight's cybersecurity portfolio overlaps heavily with the broader AI software market. The firm was an early and significant backer of Wiz, the cloud security company, holding a stake reported around 8 percent when [Google](/wiki/google) agreed to acquire Wiz in March 2025 in a roughly $32 billion all cash deal that closed in 2026, the largest acquisition in Google's history and the largest ever purchase of a venture backed startup. Insight's position was reported to be worth on the order of $2.7 billion. The firm also owned threat intelligence company Recorded Future, which it acquired in 2019 at a valuation reported near $780 million and sold to Mastercard for $2.65 billion in a deal announced in 2024.

## Notable people and exits

Jeff Horing remains a managing director and the firm's most prominent figure, and he has appeared near the top of the Forbes Midas List of leading technology investors. Deven Parekh is a longtime managing director who has been a public voice for the firm, including around the Fund XIII close. Jeff Lieberman is another senior managing director associated with a large number of the firm's investments.

Across its history Insight has recorded a long list of exits through both public offerings and acquisitions. Companies in which the firm invested and that later went public or were acquired include the e-commerce platform Shopify, the experience management company Qualtrics, the web design company Wix, the work management platform Monday.com, the cybersecurity company Darktrace, the document workflow company DocuSign, and the neighborhood network Nextdoor. The firm has also been an investor in or around major names such as Twitter and Alibaba. In 2024 and 2025 Insight reported a wave of realizations, including the sale of Recorded Future to Mastercard, the sale of data management company Own to Salesforce, the sale of digital adoption company WalkMe to SAP, and, among the largest, the sale of Wiz to Google. The firm has stated it returned more than $8 billion to its investors in 2024.

The table below summarizes a selection of notable AI and software investments and the firm's role.

| Company | Round or event (year) | Insight role |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Run:ai | Series B; Series C, $75M (2022); acquired by Nvidia (2024) | Led Series B, co-led Series C |
| Weights & Biases | Series B; acquired by CoreWeave (2025) | Series B investor |
| Jasper | Series A, $125M (2022) | Led the round |
| Databricks | Large financing at ~$62B valuation (2024) | Participating investor |
| Wiz | Multiple rounds; acquired by Google ~$32B (2025 to 2026) | Major early backer (~8% stake) |
| Recorded Future | Acquired by Insight ~$780M (2019); sold to Mastercard $2.65B (2024) | Owner and seller |
| Qualtrics | Growth investor; sold to SAP (2018), later IPO | Growth equity investor |
| Shopify | Growth investor; IPO (2015) | Growth equity investor |
| Monday.com | Growth investor; IPO (2021) | Growth equity investor |
| Darktrace | Growth investor; IPO (2021) | Growth equity investor |

## References

1. [Insight Partners, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insight_Partners)
2. [About Us, Insight Partners](https://www.insightpartners.com/about-us/)
3. [Insight Onsite, Insight Partners](https://www.insightpartners.com/onsite/)
4. [Global Software Investor Insight Partners Closes on $12.5B in Capital, Insight Partners](https://www.insightpartners.com/ideas/global-software-investor-insight-partners-closes-on-12-5b-in-capital-to-invest-in-the-next-generation-of-software-leaders/)
5. [Insight Partners Raises $12.5 Billion for New Flagship Fund, Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-16/insight-partners-raises-12-5-billion-for-new-flagship-fund)
6. [Insight Partners Collects $12.5B For New Funds, Crunchbase News](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/insight-partners-flagship-fund-13-raise/)
7. [Unlucky 13 for Insight as fundraising falls short, Venture Capital Journal](https://www.venturecapitaljournal.com/unlucky-13-for-insight-as-fundraising-falls-short/)
8. [Insight Partners collects $20B+ for largest fund in firm's history, PitchBook](https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/insight-partners-20-billion-largest-fund)
9. [Insight Partners has paid investors nearly $8 billion this year, Fortune](https://fortune.com/2024/10/28/insight-partners-twitter-alibaba-ftx-mergers-cyber-software-thoma-bravo-mastercard-visa/)
10. [How legendary venture firm Insight Partners hires and trains its next generation of investors, Fortune](https://fortune.com/article/insight-partners-analysts-venture-capital-jeff-horing-software-investing/)
11. [Insight Partners Has Invested More Than $4B Into AI. What's Next?, Crunchbase News](https://news.crunchbase.com/ai-robotics/insight-partners-investment-portfolio-george-mathew/)
12. [Nvidia acquires AI workload management startup Run:ai for $700M, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/24/nvidia-acquires-ai-workload-management-startup-runai/)
13. [Nvidia completes acquisition of AI infrastructure startup Run:ai, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/30/nvidia-completes-acquisition-of-runai/)
14. [Behind the Investment: Jasper, Insight Partners](https://www.insightpartners.com/ideas/behind-the-investment-jasper/)
15. [CoreWeave Completes Acquisition of Weights & Biases, PR Newswire](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/coreweave-completes-acquisition-of-weights--biases-302445966.html)
16. [The investors making billions from Wiz's $32 billion sale to Google, Calcalist](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/u1t4xcaky)
17. [Insight triples its money in $2.65B sale of Recorded Future to Mastercard, PitchBook](https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/insight-partners-recorded-future-mastercard)
18. [VC giant Insight Partners notifies staff and limited partners after data breach, TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/17/vc-giant-insight-partners-notifies-staff-and-limited-partners-after-data-breach/)
19. [HarbourVest leads Insight Partners' $1.5bn continuation fund, Alternatives Watch](https://www.alternativeswatch.com/2024/10/17/harbourvest-leads-insight-partners-continuation-fund-iii-software/)
20. [Jeff Horing, Team, Insight Partners](https://www.insightpartners.com/team/jeff-horing/)