Exclusive: Felicis has raised $900 million tenth fund

“I thought I was never going to raise that fund,” said Senkut. “I had my first son coming, and it was a really tough time…So, when I heard that first ‘yes,’ I thought it was a miracle.”

The year was 2009, and Aydin Senkut—a Turkish immigrant who’d first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1995—had been investing since he left Google in 2005, where he’d been the company’s first product manager and was official employee number 63. He wanted to prove he wasn’t just lucky, but that he could engineer luck, both for himself and for others. Determined to build something from scratch like his entrepreneurial parents, Senkut in 2006 launched Felicis Ventures, a firm named after the Latin word for “good fortune.” His fortune wasn’t very good at first, as he tells it—rejected by former Google colleagues almost unanimously, he forged ahead fundraising, drowning in nos. That first institutional fundraise, finally, pulled together $41 million, with early backers like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. At a moment when little else was in his control, Senkut focused on what he could: his business card.

“I was so into details, like Steve Jobs,” laughed Senkut, founder and managing partner of Felicis. “I literally found this specific printing shop in South San Francisco. They were the only ones that took heavy card stock and embossed business cards.”

He still keeps that card—it’s even got a QR code that to this day, links back to his contact information. Now, three logos, nearly 20 years, and nine funds later: Felicis has raised its tenth fund at $900 million, the firm’s largest to date, Fortune can exclusively report. It comes two years after the firm announced its ninth fund of $825 million in 2023, and the size of the 35-person team has remained consistent since. The firm’s current portfolio includes Notion, Plaid, and Canva, along with AI startups like Supabase, Mercor, Runway, Poolside, Revel, and Skild AI. Credit Karma, Adyen, Shopify, and Weights & Biases are some of Felicis’s key exits over the years. But Senkut remains acutely attuned to the version of himself that was rejected by dozens of other VCs and LPs at the very beginning.

“You can do one of two things,” he said. “You can either admit defeat, let people put you in a box, like you’re a loser. Or you can take that and say ‘No, I’m not a loser.’ And the way to show them they’re wrong is that you have to pull magic tricks out of nowhere…That’s why there will never be a victory lap.” 

Senkut is often described as being in “founder mode”—a term originated via Brian Chesky and Paul Graham to describe a relentless, hands-on leadership style. That ethos carries through in how Felicis engages with startups: The firm includes a unique clause in its term sheets promising never to vote against a founder, contractually aligning itself with the entrepreneur.

“We kept saying we were founder-friendly,” said Senkut. “One of our founders was like: What the hell does that even mean? Just commit. So, it’s now in our term sheet.”

I tell Senkut that I could easily see that going wrong, and he doesn’t flinch. 

“It could go really wrong,” he said. “We’ve made hundreds of investments and there were only two in the history of Felicis where things have gone drastically wrong. But you can’t be successful on fear. You’ll only be successful on the companies that work out…That’s the most misunderstood aspect of venture. People think we sit at a table, eliminating risk. And no, actually—you’re taking it on. You’re running into the risk. It’s like F1. One driver says, ‘I can crash, but that’s what it’s gonna take to cut another 0.01 second and get over the finish line first.’ That’s the mindset.”

Felicis was notably active during the ZIRP (zero-interest rate policy) era, when markets were frothy and valuations were especially high. According to prior TechCrunch reporting, Felicis funded 50% more deals in 2022 than in 2021. Senkut isn’t worried how that might shake out—that’s part of the race, too.

“If you’re not active, you’re actually going backwards,” he told Fortune. “We can’t say that we’ll just sit it out for a while: Nobody’s going to care about you in nine months. So we never stop investing…The big fabric that people are missing is this: The only thing that matters in this business is not the stages, ownership, whatever. It’s all about how you look after you invest. Is there a hockey stick growth?”

One of the most dramatic growth stories in AI right now is recruiting startup Mercor, which raised a $100 million Series B led by Felicis in February. Mercor CEO and cofounder Brendan Foody wasn’t planning to raise at the time—but when Felicis invited him and his cofounders to race Ferraris in Las Vegas, he figured, “why not?”

“They’ve got incredible hustle—like very few other firms,” Foody told Fortune. “They asked what valuation we thought made sense, we gave them a range of $1 billion to $2 billion, and they went straight to the top. We closed the deal.”

Foody sees Felicis as uniquely poised to help Mercor—whose revenue surpassed $75 million over about two years—in its next phase of growth, citing the firm’s deep understanding of frontier AI research and hiring help. Felicis managing partner Sundeep Peechu and partner James Detweiler have been taking calls with “almost every candidate” as Mercor has been hiring, Foody said. The firm doesn’t disclose ownership, but told Fortune it varies—Mercor was the largest check of Felicis’s last fund at $50 million, while the smallest was $100,000. 

Supporting these types of AI companies is key to Felicis’s future and, to this end, the firm this year hired OpenAI’s Peter Deng as a general partner. (Deng was a consumer VP leading the team working on ChatGPT.) Katie Riester, Felicis managing director and GP of fund of funds investing, said that Felicis is actively making choices to stay competitive in a venture space that, over the last two decades, has become more ferociously competitive.

“We’re constantly evolving what our platform looks like, and does it match the game that’s being played today,” said Riester, who was a Felicis LP herself for seven years while an SVB director. “I actually don’t like to think of venture as gambling, so that’s not the association I’m making. I think of it as getting to play a game over and over, but the game changes every time. How do you keep winning? You have to constantly change. You have to be aware of that, recognize that ego doesn’t matter. The fact you’ve won before doesn’t matter.”

To win, Felicis is ultimately looking to underwrite without reservation, going all-in, come what may. Data bears this out: In fund nine, 94% of Felicis’s investments were at the seed or Series A stage, and 87% of the capital deployed went into rounds where the firm led or co-led. They expect a similar breakdown for fund ten. When Senkut was raising the first institutional Felicis fund, he heard 50 nos before landing his first yes—from Judith Elsea, managing director at Weathergage Capital.

“Felicis has reinvented itself from a small, scrappy seed stage investor to a large, scrappy multi-stage investor who regularly leads deals,” says Elsea.

While startup investors often catch an “innovation wave” and reap big profits, Elsea wrote Fortune in an email, the VCs who stay relevant are the ones who are already paddling out for the next wave as the first one reaches the beach: “Being a VC investor is hard to do well and particularly hard to do well over long periods of time. Felicis is showing that kind of stamina.”

Senkut goes to waves too, and we talk about the HBO series, The 100 Foot Wave. You have to be ready to wipe out seriously in order to succeed spectacularly.

“If you ask me, like, our biggest fail mode is we need to take more smart risks,” said Senkut. “So, you have to really unwind your brain, like that surfer in Portugal. I used to say we’re wave surfers. But I realized there are too many good surfers, and too many waves. So, now I’m saying we’re tsunami surfers.”

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Correction, June 12, 2025: We misspelled Katie Riester’s name in the email version of this story.

Venture Deals

- Cyera, a New York City-based AI-powered data security platform, raised $540 million in Series E funding at a $6 billion valuation. Georgian, Greenoaks, and Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and were joined by existing investors Accel, Coatue, Cyberstarts, and others.

- Multiverse Computing, a Donostia, Spain-based quantum AI company, raised $215 million in Series B funding. Bullhound Capital led the round and was joined by HP Tech Ventures, SETT, Forgepoint Capital International, and others.

- Proxima Fusion, a Munich-based fusion energy technology developer, raised €130 million ($150 million) in Series A funding. Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital led the round and were joined by UVC Partners, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, and others

- Abacum, a New York City-based business planning platform for finance teams, raised $60 million in Series B funding. Scale Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Cathay Innovation and existing investors Y Combinator, Creandum, Kfund, and Atomico.

- Fermàt, a San Francisco-based AI-native commerce platform, raised $45 million in Series B funding. VMG Partners led the round and was joined by existing investors QED Investors, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, and Courtside Ventures.

- Payrails, a Berlin-based payments platform, raised $32 million in Series A funding. HV Capital led the round and was joined by existing investors EQT Ventures, General Catalyst, and Andreessen Horowitz.

- OneBalance, a London-based cross-chain applications developer platform, raised $20 million in Series A funding. cyber•Fund and Blockchain Capital led the round and were joined by Mirana Ventures and L2IV.

- Outset, a San Francisco-based AI research platform, raised $17 million in Series A funding. 8VC led the round and was joined by Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company and existing investors Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures, Rebel Fund, and others.

- Bolo AI, a Palo Alto-based AI tools developer for heavy industries, raised $8.1 million in seed funding. True Ventures led the round and was joined by Benchstrength, Accomplice, J Ventures, and Beat Ventures.

- Shovels, a Lafayette, Calif.-based AI-powered building permit data platform, raised $5 million in seed funding from Base10 Partners.

Private Equity

- Bain Capital acquired a minority stake in ARCOS, a Columbus-based workforce management platform for the utilities industry. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Grace Design Studios, backed by Bernhard Capital Partners, acquired CRGA Design, a Baltimore-based healthcare facility design firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Great Point Partners acquired a majority stake in Eutecma, a Mannheim, Germany-based temperature-controlled packaging solutions provider for the pharmaceutical industry. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Oakley Capital acquired a majority stake in G3, a London-based strategic advisory firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Oakley Capital agreed to acquire a majority stake in Join Business Management Consulting, a Siena, Italy-based management and IT consulting firm for financial services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

IPOs

- EQV Ventures Acquisition II, a Park City, Utah-based blank check company backed by EQV Group, plans to raise $350 million in an offering of 35 million units priced at $10 on the NYSE.

People

- Costanoa Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm, promoted Nancy Katz to partner.

- Maple Park Capital, a Dallas and New York-based private equity firm, added Jacob Cohen as a vice president. Previously, he was at RedBird Capital Partners.

Funds + Funds of Funds

- Ecosystem Integrity Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, raised $225 million for its fifth fund focused on sustainability.