Canaan Closes $850 Million to Continue 35-Year History of Building and Supporting Transformational Technology and Healthcare Companies

Canaan today announced $850 million in new capital to continue the firm’s 35-year history of building and supporting transformational companies in the technology and healthcare sectors. Canaan XIII is an oversubscribed $650 million fund intended to support visionary entrepreneurs seeking seed and Series A funding with reserves to support companies through exits including merger and acquisition (M&A) activity and initial public offerings (IPOs). An additional $200 million of commitments is available to accelerate the growth of existing portfolio companies across all of Canaan’s active funds. These new funds bring Canaan’s total assets under management to $6.8 billion.

“We are grateful for the support of our limited partners, many of whom have invested with Canaan over many years in numerous funds. Their belief in the firm and our consistent approach to venture allowed for a fast and efficient fundraising process despite market conditions,” said John J. Pacifico, General Partner, COO & CFO of Canaan. “Whereas others are navigating their portfolios through a difficult market for the first time, Canaan has amassed decades of operational expertise that has put us in a unique position to help our portfolio company leadership teams guide their businesses through the current environment. We believe Canaan XIII reflects the high caliber of our team, the trust we’ve built with our limited partners, and the successful track record we’ve established through multiple up and down market cycles over our more than 35-year history in venture.”

Canaan has long sought to build deep relationships with the brightest scientific and entrepreneurial minds in academia and industry in their earliest days of company building. With investments spanning technology and life sciences from Canaan’s early days, the firm’s consistent approach has led to a long track record of enduring companies and deep partnerships with entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists. This approach has also led to many successful exits with important new technologies distributed throughout the world, including Dexcom, Instacart, and Match, along with 14 FDA-approved drugs successfully hitting the market, including ten in the last eight years.

In just the past five years, Canaan has seen ten IPOs, four public listings, and eight M&A exits within its portfolio and generated nearly $1.7 billion of realizations. They include IPOs for Day One Biopharmaceuticals in May 2021, TheRealReal in June 2019, and Arvinas in September 2018, as well as public listings for Aeva and Berkshire Grey, both in 2021. They also include acquisitions for Kustomer, acquired by Meta for $1 billion in February 2022, Unchained Labs acquired by the Carlyle Group for $435 million in April 2021, Ambra Health acquired by Intelerad Medical Systems in October 2021, ShopKeep acquired by Lightspeed for $440 million in November 2020, and most recently, Axis Security acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in March 2023.

Consistent with prior funds, Canaan XIII will invest in seed and early-stage technology companies spanning enterprise, consumer, frontier tech, and fintech. For example, as companies confront business interruptions and financial consequences from cybersecurity attacks, enterprise investments from Canaan XIII will seek to build on recent experience with leading developer security platform Snyk and industrial security leader Dragos. Canaan will also seek to invest in its expanded consumer and frontier tech practices, specifically marketplaces, commerce, and gaming, and companies in robotics, supply chain, logistics, autonomous vehicles, and AI/ML, respectively. Finally, fintech investments are expected to be rooted in platform and infrastructure companies across financial services, insurance, and property.

“Canaan has always aimed to be the very first to partner with the best entrepreneurs and companies because we have a shared long-term view to build a company together, in the right way and for the long haul,” said Maha Ibrahim, General Partner at Canaan. “This consistent approach is intrinsic to who we are and how we work. It’s also invaluable to aspiring entrepreneurs during times of uncertainty. We pride ourselves on being our founders’ first phone call and being able to offer the deep institutional knowledge only 35 years in this industry can provide.”