New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American venture capital firm and one of the largest in the United States by committed capital. Founded in 1977, NEA invests across both technology and healthcare, and across the full company lifecycle from seed to growth stage. As of mid-2025 the firm reported more than $25 billion in assets under management, and it has backed close to 1,000 companies over its history, producing more than 250 initial public offerings and more than 300 acquisitions.[1] The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with additional offices in Timonium, Maryland, New York City, San Francisco, and London.[1] In recent years NEA has been an active investor in artificial intelligence, with positions in Perplexity, Together AI, Anyscale, Databricks, ElevenLabs, and Cloudflare.

Founding and history

NEA was founded in 1977 by C. Richard "Dick" Kramlich, Frank Bonsal Jr., and Charles "Chuck" Newhall III.[1] The three founders brought complementary backgrounds. Kramlich had worked alongside the pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock beginning in 1969. Bonsal had been an investment banker at the Baltimore firm Alex. Brown and Sons, where he focused on initial public offerings for young companies. Newhall had previously managed an investment fund at T. Rowe Price during the early 1970s. From the start the firm was structured with a presence on both coasts, pairing a West Coast technology focus with East Coast roots in Maryland.[1]

The firm's first fund closed with only $16 million in capital. Its second fund raised $45 million, and the third gathered $125 million in commitments from investors in 1984.[1] Among NEA's earliest investments was the networking company 3Com, which it backed alongside Mayfield Fund and the angel investor Jack Melchor in 1981.[1] Over the following decades the firm's fund sizes grew substantially, reaching roughly $2.3 billion for its tenth fund in 2000, $3.1 billion for its fifteenth fund in 2015, and $3.3 billion for its sixteenth fund in 2017.[1]

Dick Kramlich, widely regarded as a dean of Silicon Valley venture capital, died in 2025.[18] His career spanned early bets on companies including 3Com and the display maker Pixelworks, and he remained associated with the firm and the broader venture community for decades after its founding.[18]

A dual technology and healthcare model

A defining feature of NEA is that it runs two large practices side by side: technology and healthcare. On the technology side the firm invests in enterprise and consumer software, fintech, infrastructure, next-generation internet technologies, and artificial intelligence. On the healthcare side it backs biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, digital health, and tech-enabled healthcare services. This breadth distinguishes NEA from many large venture firms that concentrate primarily on software, and the firm has historically described healthcare and life sciences as a core pillar rather than a side allocation.

The firm also invests across every stage of a company's life, from seed and Series A financings through late-stage growth rounds, and it has held positions through public listings. This multi-stage, multi-sector posture is intended to let NEA follow companies from formation through maturity and to allocate capital wherever it sees opportunity across its two domains.

Funds and assets under management

In January 2023 NEA announced one of the largest fundraises in its history, closing approximately $6.2 billion across a pair of new vehicles.[2][4] The total comprised about $3.05 billion for its eighteenth flagship fund, focused on early-stage investing, and about $3.18 billion for its first dedicated venture growth equity fund.[2] The split into two vehicles marked the firm's first formal dual-fund structure, responding to limited partners who wanted distinct early-stage and growth-stage exposure. In connection with the expansion, NEA registered as a registered investment adviser, a step that several large peers such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital had also taken to gain flexibility to hold a wider range of assets and to keep positions in companies for longer.[3]

At the time of that 2023 close, NEA reported assets under management of more than $25 billion as of December 31, 2022.[3] The firm stated that it had already deployed roughly 20 percent of the newly raised capital, and it indicated that about one-third of the growth fund would be reserved to support existing portfolio companies.[3] By 2025 the firm continued to report assets under management above $25 billion. In December 2025 a regulatory filing disclosed a new vehicle named NEA 19 Venture Growth Equity, L.P., indicating the firm was raising a successor growth fund, though the filing did not state a final amount raised.[17]

Scott Sandell, who joined NEA in the mid-1990s and led the firm for years as managing general partner, framed the 2023 raise as the largest pool of capital in the firm's history.[3] He also argued that many companies founded in the prior decade, when capital was abundant, had not developed strong capital discipline, and he positioned the new funds around backing more capital-efficient businesses.

Leadership and notable people

In April 2024, NEA announced a leadership transition. Tony Florence and Mohamad Makhzoumi were named co-chief executive officers of the firm, while Scott Sandell moved into the role of executive chairman and chief investment officer.[5][6] All three continued to invest actively. Florence had joined NEA in 2008 and led the firm's technology investing practice for more than a decade before becoming co-president; Makhzoumi first joined in 2000, led the healthcare practice, and became co-president in 2023.[5] The pairing of a technology leader and a healthcare leader at the top of the firm mirrors NEA's dual-sector model.

Sandell himself has been associated with a long list of technology investments over his career, including Salesforce, Tableau Software, WebEx, and Workday, and he has served on the boards of companies such as Robinhood, Cloudflare, and Coursera. Pete Sonsini, a general partner who led enterprise investing at the firm, led NEA's investment in the AI infrastructure company Anyscale and joined its board.[9]

Notable exits and portfolio

NEA's long history has produced one of the deepest exit records in venture capital, with more than 250 IPOs and more than 300 acquisitions across its funds.[1] Notable companies the firm has backed over the years include Salesforce, Tableau, MuleSoft, Workday, Cloudflare, Robinhood, Coursera, Uber, Snap, Plaid, MongoDB, Upwork, Houzz, 23andMe, and the quantum computing company IonQ, along with healthcare names such as Acadia Pharmaceuticals, Amicus Therapeutics, and Tesaro. In the cloud security company Cloudflare, NEA was the single largest shareholder going into the 2019 IPO, having backed the company across earlier rounds including a 2015 Series D; the firm held roughly a 20 percent stake that was diluted to around 18 percent in the offering.[16]

AI portfolio

NEA has been one of the more active large venture firms in generative AI and the surrounding infrastructure. It led the Series A of Perplexity, the AI answer engine, in March 2023, a round of about $25.6 million; the firm published a thesis describing answer engines as a challenge to traditional web search.[7][8] NEA was an early backer of Anyscale, the company commercializing the open-source Ray framework for distributed computing and AI workloads, leading its $40 million Series B in October 2020.[9][10] The firm later invested in Together AI, a cloud platform for training and serving open-source models, first backing the company in 2023.

The firm has also extended its AI footprint into media and applied tooling. NEA participated in the January 2025 Series C of the voice AI company ElevenLabs, a $180 million round co-led by ICONIQ Growth and Andreessen Horowitz that valued the company at about $3.3 billion.[12] Through its long-standing position in Databricks, NEA also gained indirect exposure to the generative AI model company MosaicML, which Databricks agreed to acquire for approximately $1.3 billion in June 2023;[13][14] NEA was an investor in Databricks rather than in MosaicML directly.[15] The firm has continued to deploy across AI agents and enterprise AI applications, reflecting a broad strategy of backing both the infrastructure layer and the application layer of the current AI cycle.

The table below summarizes several of NEA's notable AI-related investments. Round leadership is attributed where confirmed by primary or company sources.

Company	Round / Year	NEA role
Perplexity	Series A, March 2023 (about $25.6M)[8]	Lead investor
Anyscale	Series B, October 2020 ($40M)[9]	Lead investor
Together AI	Investor since 2023	Participant
ElevenLabs	Series C, January 2025 ($180M)[12]	Participant (round co-led by ICONIQ and a16z)
Databricks	Multiple rounds (2017, 2019 and later)[15]	Participant; acquirer of MosaicML in 2023
Cloudflare	Series D 2015 and earlier; IPO 2019[16]	Largest pre-IPO shareholder

References

New Enterprise Associates, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Enterprise_Associates
NEA Closes On Two Funds Totaling $6.2 Billion, NEA press release, January 26, 2023. https://www.nea.com/news/press-releases/nea-closes-on-two-funds-totaling-62-billion
NEA now manages over $25 billion in assets, and it's looking beyond venture, TechCrunch, January 26, 2023. https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/26/nea-now-manages-25-billion-in-assets-oh-and-its-looking-beyond-venture/
NEA raises whopping $6.2 billion for a pair of new VC funds, Axios, January 26, 2023. https://www.axios.com/2023/01/26/nea-raises-whopping-62-billion-for-pair-of-new-vc-funds
Tony Florence and Mohamad Makhzoumi Named Co-CEOs of NEA; Scott Sandell Assumes Role of Executive Chairman and CIO, NEA press release, April 9, 2024. https://www.nea.com/news/press-releases/tony-florence-and-mohamad-makhzoumi-named-co-ceos-of-nea-scott-sandell-assumes-role-of-executive-chairman-cio
Tony Florence and Mohamad Makhzoumi Named Co-CEOs of NEA, BusinessWire, April 9, 2024. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240409483634/en/Tony-Florence-and-Mohamad-Makhzoumi-Named-Co-CEOs-of-NEA-Scott-Sandell-Assumes-Role-of-Executive-Chairman-CIO
Our Investment in Perplexity AI: Answer Engines and the End of Traditional Search, NEA blog. https://www.nea.com/blog/our-investment-in-perplexity-ai-answer-engines-and-the-end-of-traditional-search
NEA Portfolio: Perplexity. https://www.nea.com/portfolio/perplexity
Anyscale Announces $40M in Series B Funding Led by NEA, BusinessWire, October 21, 2020. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201021005541/en/Anyscale-Announces-%2440M-in-Series-B-Funding-Led-by-NEA
Anyscale raises $40 million to launch a managed service for distributed computing workloads, VentureBeat, October 21, 2020. https://venturebeat.com/technology/anyscale-raises-40-million-to-launch-a-managed-service-for-distributed-computing-workloads
Together AI Announces $305M Series B, Together AI blog. https://www.together.ai/blog/together-ai-announcing-305m-series-b
Voice AI startup ElevenLabs raises $180M in new funding, tripling its valuation to $3.3 billion, Tech Startups, January 31, 2025. https://techstartups.com/2025/01/31/voice-ai-startup-elevenlabs-raises-180-million-in-funding-tripling-its-valuation-to-3-3-billion/
Databricks Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire MosaicML, Databricks newsroom, June 26, 2023. https://www.databricks.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/databricks-signs-definitive-agreement-acquire-mosaicml-leading-generative-ai-platform
Databricks picks up MosaicML, an OpenAI competitor, for $1.3B, TechCrunch, June 26, 2023. https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/26/databricks-picks-up-mosaicml-an-openai-competitor-for-1-3b/
NEA Portfolio: Databricks. https://www.nea.com/portfolio/databricks
Cloudflare, Inc. Form S-1/A, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2019. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001477333/000119312519235734/d735023ds1a.htm
NEA 19 Venture Growth Equity, L.P., Form D filing, December 18, 2025. https://www.formds.com/issuers/nea-19-venture-growth-equity-l-p
Remembering Dick Kramlich, NEA blog. https://www.nea.com/blog/remembering-dick-kramlich

Editing: New Enterprise Associates