Investor profile for Benchmark: stage-based planning range, investment stages, sector focus, portfolio companies, sources, and verification status. Part of the Venture Capital Tracker directory.

VC fund profile · evidence-aware directory data

Benchmark stages, portfolio and investment profile

Early-stage firm known for its equal-partnership model and concentrated Series A investments.

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Stage-based planning range

$1M–$10M

This is a planning range inferred from stage coverage, not a firm-disclosed check size.

Methodology: Stage bucket inferred from the rounds a fund leads or invests in.

No firm-specific check-size disclosure is recorded.

Source link not recorded Confidence: 25% Verified: Not recorded View methodology

Investment stages

Leads: Series A

Participates: Seed, Series A

Sector focus

Generalist Technology

Geography

San Francisco, CA

Founded 1995

Fund size / AUM

Not recorded

A separate fund-size evidence record is not yet available.

Portfolio in our directory

23

Linked startup profiles

Latest fund vehicle

Not recorded

Vehicle name, size, and vintage are not yet structured.

Recent tracked investment

Deep Cogito

Series A · $43M · August 2026

Rounds they lead

Series A

Rounds they invest

Seed Series A

Last verified: Not recorded. Check-size evidence is labeled by basis so planning estimates are not presented as firm disclosures.

Portfolio companies we track

Startups in our directory that list Benchmark as an investor (23 total).

Related investment articles

FAQs about Benchmark

Stage fit, check size, thesis, and how founders typically approach this firm — based on public sources and our directory.

Benchmark leads Series A rounds and selectively participates in Seed. Our directory shows Series A as the primary lead stage; the firm does not pursue growth-stage investing.
Benchmark raised a $425M eleventh fund (Forbes, 2024) and typically invests roughly $5M–$20M in Series A rounds for meaningful ownership. Exact sizing is deal-specific.
Offices in San Francisco and Woodside, CA. Benchmark is Silicon Valley–centric but has backed global category-defining companies; it remains highly selective and concentrated.
Benchmark is sector-agnostic within early-stage technology — consumer, enterprise, infrastructure, and AI — with a focus on contrarian insights and concentrated partnership attention.
Benchmark almost always leads Series A and takes a board seat. Its equal-partnership model limits portfolio size so each partner can engage deeply.
In our directory: Deep Cogito (/startup/deep-cogito), Starcloud (/startup/starcloud), Cursor (/startup/cursor), Quora (/startup/quora), Sesame (/startup/sesame), Cyngn (/startup/cyngn), Anysphere (/startup/anysphere), Here Not There, Inc. (/startup/here-not-there-inc).
Benchmark is among the most selective VCs — roughly a few new investments per partner per year. Warm introductions from trusted founders or investors are essential; cold outreach rarely works.
August 26, 2026: Benchmark participated in Deep Cogito’s $43 million Series A (/2026-deep-cogito-43m-series-a-benchmark, /startup/deep-cogito). Cursor, a Benchmark-backed company, was acquired by SpaceX on August 14, 2026 (/2026-spacex-closes-cursor-acquisition, /startup/cursor). Starcloud, also Benchmark-backed, printed $2.3 billion on August 21 (/2026-starcloud-250m-2-3b-orbital-inference, /startup/starcloud). See /fund/benchmark.

By Venture Capital Tracker

Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.