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Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC
Sequoia Capital is a venture capital firm that invests other people's money in young, fast-growing startups and shares in the profits when those companies succeed.
Sequoia Capital is one of the oldest and most famous venture capital firms in the world. It raises big pools of money from universities, pension funds, charities, and wealthy individuals, then uses that money to buy ownership stakes in private startups. When those startups grow and eventually go public or get acquired, Sequoia sells its shares and keeps a slice of the gains.
Venture capital is a simple idea with a strange shape. Most startups fail, so a venture fund cannot win by playing it safe. It needs a few enormous winners to pay for all the losers. Sequoia built its reputation on finding those rare winners early and holding on. It wrote some of the first checks for Apple, Google, Cisco, Oracle, Nvidia, and PayPal, and more recently for Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, and Snowflake. A single great bet can return the entire fund many times over, which is why the firm's partners are willing to swing for the fences. Sequoia makes money in two ways. It charges investors a management fee, usually a small percentage of the money committed each year. The bigger prize is "carried interest": Sequoia typically keeps around 20% to 30% of the profits it earns for its investors, and the partners split that among themselves. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, and it has expanded into China, India, and Southeast Asia through local teams.
The business has had a turbulent stretch. The 2021 startup boom pushed valuations to dizzying heights, then rising interest rates caused a painful slump in 2022 and 2023. Sequoia also ran into trouble with FTX, the crypto exchange it backed, which collapsed into fraud; the firm marked its investment down to zero and later faced scrutiny over how much it knew. In 2024 the firm split its China and India/Southeast Asia operations into independent entities, a change that followed rising geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China. Sequoia's edge is its brand and its network: founders want Sequoia on their cap table because the name opens doors to customers, hires, and later investors. That advantage is real but not permanent. Rivals like Andreessen Horowitz and SoftBank compete fiercely for the best deals, and a fund's returns depend heavily on which era it happens to be investing in.
Saved answer · last researched 9 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Sequoia backs about 50 deals a year, but only 14% turn into follow-on rounds
- 14% Deals that led to a follow-on round
- 86% Deals that did not lead to a follow-on round
Sequoia's deal count tripled from 20 to roughly 50 a year over the past decade, while its conversion rate fell from 46% to 14%. For a firm that makes money when a startup's value rises, that means most bets stay small and a handful of winners have to carry the fund. The math behind venture capital is a few big hits paying for many quiet misses. Source: Mytoken, data from 2026
Timeline
Sequoia Starts Small
In 1972, Don Valentine founded Sequoia Capital when Silicon Valley was barely two years old. He named it after the giant long-living tree, not himself — a humble way of saying he wanted the firm to last. Its first fund was just $3 million, and from that small pot came early bets on Apple and Atari.
The Apple Bet
A few years in, Valentine put $150,000 into Apple after a friend at Atari introduced him to Steve Jobs. That one stake became one of the wins that made Sequoia's name, and set the pattern the firm would chase for decades: get in early on the company everyone later wishes they'd backed.
Sequoia Goes to China
Sequoia had built its reputation in America, but in 2005 it pushed overseas and set up Sequoia Capital China with Neil Shen. That arm would go on to invest in hundreds of companies and become a huge slice of the firm's global footprint — Sequoia was no longer just a Silicon Valley story.
The Sequoia Capital Fund
The traditional venture fund lives and dies on a ten-year clock: raise money, invest it, give it back. In 2021 Sequoia reorganized its U.S. and Europe business around The Sequoia Capital Fund, an open-ended vehicle that could hold public stocks and feed closed-end sub-funds across every stage from inception to IPO. That meant no forced ten-year deadline — it could stay partners with founders longer and keep holding winners after they went public.
Leone Hands Over the Reins
In 2022, global senior partner Doug Leone retired, and Roelof Botha, who had been running the U.S. and Europe business, took over as leader of the whole firm. It was a planned, internal handover — the kind of smooth succession partnerships love to show off.
One Firm Becomes Three
Rising U.S.-China tensions and regulatory pressure made a single global brand too complicated to carry. Sequoia broke into three independent units: the China arm became HongShan and the India and Southeast Asia arm became Peak XV Partners, a split completed by 2024. Sequoia no longer operated in China or Southeast Asia at all — the unified global brand was over.
Botha Steps Down
Roelof Botha stepped down as senior steward after just over three years at the top, following a turbulent stretch that included the FTX write-off, the global split and a culture controversy. Longtime partners Alfred Lin and Pat Grady took over as co-stewards, a signal that the firm would carry on from inside rather than reach outside.
Seven Billion for the AI Push
Under Lin and Grady, Sequoia raised roughly $7 billion for its expansion strategy fund — nearly double its 2022 vehicle and the first fresh fundraising under the new leadership. The money was aimed at late-stage AI bets including OpenAI and Anthropic, both eyeing 2026 listings. Sequoia was repositioning itself around the AI era.
The Biggest Bet Yet
Sequoia committed $10 billion to a strategy pairing artificial intelligence with "reindustrialization" — manufacturing, defence, robotics and energy. It was the biggest bet in the firm's 54-year history, driven by Lin and Grady, and it came with a bigger stake in Anthropic, hedging across rival AI model makers. The little $3 million fund had become a firm writing ten-figure checks on the future of American industry.