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Bain Capital Launches $1B Fund To Invest In Early To Growth Including Software

Bain Capital Ventures, the VC arm of the Boston investment company, is gearing up to bankroll the next innovators and technology disruptors, announcing in November the launch of a new $1 billion fund.

The $1 billion will be spread across three funds with $650 million going to its flagship fund, $250 million earmarked for growth stage investments and $100 million which is coming from the partners at Bain Capital and will be used on every investment that comes from the new fund.  Bain Capital Ventures has been at the investing game for years now backing the likes of LinkedIn and Jet.com among a slew of others. It marks the eighth fund for the veteran VC firm and comes as it has had successes with some of the companies it has backed such as DocuSign which went public in April and SendGrid, which had its public debut in 2017. DocuSign’s stock has surged since its IPO and SendGrid is being acquired by Twilio in a $2 billion deal. Other recent billion dollar exits for Bain-backed companies include Blue Coat, Rapid7, SquareTrade and SurveyMonkey.  Since its first venture fund in 2001, Bain Capital Ventures has invested more than $3.6 billion to launch and grow over 240 companies and has helped its portfolio realize over $50 billion in exit value.

“Technologies like AI, cloud, and autonomy are redefining entire industries and disrupting traditional business models,” said Ajay Agarwal, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures in a statement when announcing the new fund. “The opportunity for massive value creation is unsurpassed in the history of technology startups.”

With the new fund, Bain plans to focus on technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, autonomy and other technological advances that are overhauling entire industries and disrupting traditional business models. The fund will focus on investments in software as a service platforms, infrastructure software, security, commerce, fintech and healthcare. The VC noted that it invests about half of its capital in early-stage companies and in the past five years has accelerated its early-stage investing efforts, particularly in Silicon Valley.

“Today, with $4.9 billion under management, our mission to invest in the very best entrepreneurs who are solving massive problems remains unwavering, even as the world around us looks radically different than it did in 2001,” Bain wrote when announcing the new fund. “We have a team of 30 investors who are ready and excited to back the next generation of founders and startup leaders.”