Kleiner Perkins

Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm whose AI work includes incubating Glean, leading its Series A and co-leading its Series D. On March 24, 2026, it announced $3.5 billion in new funds: $1 billion for early-stage companies and $2.5 billion in growth funds. Its stated strategy combines broad early-stage AI investing with selective backing of breakout companies at growth stages.[7][4][6]

Glean's relationship with Kleiner Perkins began years before those funds. In his February 27, 2024 account, Mamoon Hamid recalled that Arvind had started Glean in the firm's Sand Hill Road offices almost five years earlier. The team quickly grew to nearly 20 engineers, who built the product in Kleiner Perkins's incubation space until the pandemic began. The firm led Glean's Series A and announced that it was co-leading the Series D in February 2024.[4]

Glean was built to connect and understand a company's fragmented information, grounding answers in an enterprise knowledge graph. Hamid described its subsequent development as search technology retrieving relevant information for LLMs, with company information kept private, permissions-aware and referenceable to source documentation. This supported a transition from answering questions toward routine generative tasks. Glean's engineers developed the product; Kleiner Perkins supplied incubation space and investment.[4]

As of February 27, 2024, Hamid described Glean as serving hundreds of customers, including Databricks, Canva, BILL, Grammarly, Confluent, Duolingo and CitizenM. He reported that employees using Glean Assistant averaged 14 queries per day and said they saved two to three hours each week.[4]

On June 28, 2024, Kleiner Perkins announced KP21, an $825 million early-stage fund, and KP Select III, a $1.2 billion fund for high-inflection investments. Its investment domains remained enterprise software, consumer, healthcare, fintech and hardtech, with AI presented as accelerating each. The announcement also identified two additions since 2022: Leigh Marie Braswell, a partner focused on AI, and Everett Randle, a partner leading growth efforts.[5]

The March 24, 2026 announcement introduced KP22, a $1 billion early-stage fund, alongside $2.5 billion in growth funds. Kleiner Perkins named professional services, healthcare, autonomy, security, financial services, productivity and the physical economy among its investment opportunities. It described lean investment and portfolio operating teams providing bespoke, hands-on support through different stages of company growth. These figures are announced fund sizes.[6]

The firm's enterprise AI investments followed a much longer history of technology and life sciences investing. Kleiner Perkins dates its origin to 1972. In 1977, Frank Caufield and Brook Byers joined Eugene Kleiner and Tom Perkins to expand the firm and create Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, subsequently called Kleiner Perkins. Its historical account of Caufield identifies AOL, Caremark, Quantum Corporation and Sybase among his notable investments; he also served on their boards.[7]

A later organizational change concerned growth investing. On September 14, 2018, Dan Primack reported in Axios that Kleiner Perkins's digital growth team would form a new independent firm. By March 2026, Kleiner Perkins was again announcing growth funds alongside its early-stage vehicle.[8][6]