New York powerhouse VC Insight Partners takes another $12.5 billion after $8 billion exit

Jeff Horing’s Insight Partners is to New York venture capital what Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia are to Silicon Valley. And it’s a status that was cemented with Insight’s latest shutdown.

As expected, Insight Partners announced On Thursday, it closed another giant flagship fund, known as Fund XIII, along with its second Opportunity Fund, collectively $12.5 billion in new capital. An opportunity fund is usually money set aside to reinvest in existing portfolio companies when new rounds arise.

In September, it was rumored to be working on a fund of $10 plus billion. Insight has clearly achieved that goal, and then some. With this fund it now has $90 billion in assets under management.

An Insight spokesman declined to disclose how many billions are in each new fund, but some of the money is also in what it calls a “dedicated buyout co-investment fund.” The spokesperson said that this money will be used for purchasing software investments, an established area for the 30-year-old firm.

This raises signs that Insight has no intention of ceding the top dog spot to upstart New York VC powerhouse, Thrive. In 2024, Josh Kushner’s Thrive led and co-led many of the largest deals from OpenAI’s $6.6 billion round to the Anysphere’s $100 million Series B, the creator of the AI ​​Cursor coding assistant.

Insight has not ceded any ground. For example, the VC company won Databricks’ co-leadership a record $10 billion fundraising deal in December, alongside Thrive. To do so, he leveraged funds from his Partners Public Equities fund, a fund created to buy public stocks. This fresh capital will help pursue, perhaps even lead, more business.

Interestingly, in a year where the closed IPO market means delayed returns for many VCs, Insight said it did well with its portfolio companies recording more than $8 billion in exits by 2024, largely through acquisitions. These include Recorded Future at Mastercard for $2.65 billionRight to Salesforce for $1.9 billionWalkMe to SAP for $1.5 billionand Jama Software at private equity for $1.2 billion.