The son of a mechanic, Santi Subotovsky has thought a lot about cars.
“The most surprising thing is how much you can do yourself,” said Subotovsky. “Here in the U.S., we take that for granted. We buy a car and, when it gets old, we return it and get a new one. Actually, you can build a car. The car you build is going to be different from any other car out there. But it’s still a great car that gets a lot of attention.”
In his garage with his kids, Subotovsky—who’s been a general partner at Emergence Capital since 2016—is rebuilding a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle. Each startup is distinct, the same way no two classic cars are exactly alike.
“Every company is different,” said Subotovsky. “‘You should hire this person, or do that.’ But no, you’re making iterative decisions based on how you want the car to come together. So, you need to make sure you put in all the right parts for that car, and that you understand the terrain you’re dealing with.”
Cars are a craft, the kind that requires hands, sweat, expertise, and hours. Investors across Emergence (or EmCap, as it’s sometimes called) seem to all have artisanal tasks of their own—firm cofounder Gordon Ritter is a rower, general partner Jake Saper is a musician, and partner Yaz El-Baba is a competitive mixed martial artist. Joe Floyd, general partner at Emergence since 2018, has written and illustrated comic books, including one called Silicon Heroes, imagined for his nieces and nephews.
“Reading a graphic novel or comic book, you have to use your imagination, to fill in all the blanks,” Floyd told Fortune. “You’re getting little snapshots, and then you create that movie in your head of what happens between panels.”
Most tactile crafts involve filling in the blanks, or seeing what’s possible even if it isn’t obvious. They also can’t scale terribly well—certainly, you could argue that scaling comic book illustration or classic car restoration is possible, but it’s outside the nature of the thing. And there is, I suppose, a through-line here to venture capital—at a moment in the industry where some firms are growing into asset managers and others are focusing on basics, Emergence considers itself solidly in the latter camp (albeit with a lot of cash).
Emergence has closed its oversubscribed seventh fund at $1 billion, Fortune can exclusively report. Since its founding in 2003, the firm has backed Salesforce, Zoom, Gusto, Veeva Systems, Bill.com, and Doximity.
“We’ve always said that if we graduate from emerging to established, then we need to start a new firm,” said Subotovsky. “Hopefully, this will continue the eternal process of emergence.”
This marks a notable jump from the firm’s sixth fund, announced in 2021 at $575 million. The jump is, in part, to pursue AI and the future of work.
“It’s a generational opportunity for AI investing, period,” said Floyd. “This is such a big technology shift, and we wanted to be in a position where we could fund these entrepreneurs. Right now, AI companies are growing faster than we’ve ever seen before and going into markets that they hadn’t been able to go into before. It’s a moment in time where we can really lean into our experience helping companies move from on-prem to cloud. It’s now the same thing. How can we help them move from SaaS to AI?”
One AI founder currently working with Emergence: Eric Simons, CEO and founder of StackBlitz. StackBlitz—which released AI app development tool Bolt.new in 2024—is among the high-flying AI startups soaring to millions in ARR, or annual recurring revenue, over months. Simons said via email that his company is at a “major growth moment” and that Emergence is playing a “critical role” as the company scales. “They’re actually chopping wood and carrying water, which is rare,” Simons added.
Together AI, Arcee AI, and Bland are also among the firm’s biggest AI plays to date. And the firm, which primarily invests at seed and Series A, is likely to be hunkered in for a long time, even by venture standards. Even though Zoom went public in 2019, Subotovsky is the only pre-IPO VC remaining on the company’s board. Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, who calls Emergence a “founder’s big brother,” still sees the firm as key to Zoom’s future. (The firm still holds a stake in Zoom worth about $400 million.)
“They’re more like a basketball team than an NFL team,” said Yuan (yes) over Zoom. “They’re a smart, small team, and the beauty of a small team is that you know they all want to support you.”
Since 2007, Stanford University has backed Emergence. Rob Wallace, CEO of Stanford Management Company, which manages the university’s endowment, describes the firm as “careful investors” and “deep domain specialists in SaaS and software.”
“If we took the cumulative gains that Emergence has made for Stanford since 2007, it would endow in perpetuity more than 800 full undergraduate scholarships every year,” said Wallace, adding: “The endowment is sweating on behalf of the students and scholars of Stanford every single day.”
Floyd and Subotovsky have been at Emergence for a combined 28 years, starting long before either became a GP. Their shared affinity for craft-like tasks translates to venture, especially salient in today’s landscape. For Subotovsky, it’s a reminder that a company, like a classic car, is more than a machine—it’s a story that’s always moving, and a process demanding tenacity.
“I do feel it’s a reflection of how we do venture,” said Subotovsky. “Venture at some point got very commercialized. It became more transactional, and that worked for a while, but now we’re going back to the basics. Building a company isn’t just pushing a button and hiring automatically. It’s hard. And though there are playbooks—and you can benefit from those playbooks—there’s still a lot of inquiry that’s required. Because every company is a unique thing. That’s why I feel that people who are going to be successful in helping founders build these companies from emerging to iconic, will need to love it—and it will take a while.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Character Biosciences, a Jersey City-based eye diseases therapies developer, raised $93 million in Series B funding. aMoon and Luma Group led the round and were joined by Bausch + Lomb, Jefferson Life Sciences, and existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Catalio Capital Management, S32, and KdT Ventures.
- Navina, a New York City-based clinical AI intelligence provider, raised $55 million in Series C funding. Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the round and was joined by existing investors Vertex Ventures Israel, Grove Ventures, and ALIVE.
- CamGraPhIC, a Cambridge, England-based optical interconnect technology developer, raised €25 million ($27 million) in Series A funding. CDP Venture Capital, NATO Innovation Fund, Sony Innovation Fund, and Join Capital led the round and were joined by Bosch Ventures, Frontier IP, and Indaco Venture Partners.
- Arcade, a San Francisco, Calif.-based generative AI marketplace, raised $25 million in Series A funding from Canaan Partners, Forerunner Ventures, Adverb Ventures, Factorial Funds, existing investors Reid Hoffman, Offline Ventures, Sound Ventures, angel investors, and others.
- Rain, a New York City-based stablecoin-powered card issuing platform, raised $24.5 million in funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Galaxy Ventures, Goldcrest, Thayer, Hard Yaka, existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coinbase Ventures, Vinyl Capital, and others.
- RockFi, a Paris-based wealth management platform, raised €18 million ($19.4 million) in Series A funding. Partech led the round and was joined by existing investor Varsity and angel investors.
- EDGE Boost, a San Diego-based banking solution for gambling, raised $17.2 million funding. Bullpen Capital led the round and was joined by Step Stone Group, Suro Capital, Impulsum Ventures, and others.
- Browser Use, a San Francisco-based AI agent browser interaction interface, raised $17 million in seed funding. Felicis led the round and was joined by A Capital, SV Angel, Nexus Venture Partners, Paul Graham, and others.
- Charm Security, a New York City-based AI-powered customer security solutions provider, raised $8 million in seed funding from Team8.
- Hunted Labs, a McLean, Va.-based software supply chain security solutions provider, raised $3 million in pre-seed funding from Red Cell Partners.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- Clearlake Capital Group agreed to acquire Dun & Bradstreet, a Jacksonville-based business decisioning data and insights provider, in a transaction valued at $7.7 billion, including outstanding debt, at an equity value of $4.1 billion.
- Agilitas Private Equity agreed to acquire the tech services business of Tietoevry, a Helsinki-based loud, data, and software company for €300 million ($324.1 million), of which €70 million is in earn-out payments.
- McGraw Hill, backed by Platinum Equity, acquired Essaypop, a Los Angeles-based cloud-based writing platform for students. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- Ardian agreed to acquire Akuo, a Paris-based renewable energy producer, from ICG. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- A wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority agreed to acquire a minority stake in European Camping Group, an Aix-en-Provence Cedex, France-based campsite company, from PAI Partners.
IPOS
- SmartStop Self Storage REIT, a Ladera Ranch, Calif.-based self-storage facilities owner and operator, plans to raise $972 million in an offering of 27 million shares priced between $28 and $36 on the NYSE. The company posted $237 million in revenue for the year ending Dec. 31, 2024. Extra Space Storage backs the company.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- Oakley Capital, a London-based private equity firm, raised €4.5 billion ($4.9 billion) for its sixth fund focused on European technology, digital consumer, education, and business services companies.
PEOPLE
- Greycroft, a New York City-based venture capital firm, added Jim Murphy as partner, global strategic relationships. Previously, he was at The Coca-Cola Company.