Venture capital powerhouse DFJ Raises $350 million, plans to pump portion of funds into Seattle startups

Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has backed companies such as SpaceX, Twilio and Yammer, announced this week that it raised its twelfth fund, consisting of $350 million from six core investors. “With this new fund, we will be looking to make seed and early-stage investments in trailblazing, purpose-driven entrepreneurs with ideas that have the potential to reinvent entire industries,” DFJ partner Steve Jurvetson said in the company blog. The firm also was a backer of game maker Z2 and communications software company Varolii, both of which sold in the past three years. In addition to well known brands such as Tesla, Twilio and Redfin, the firm also is a backer of companies like Rethink Robotics and Planet Labs. With its twelfth fund, DFJ will continue to invest in the future of technology, looking into “autonomous transportation, digital health, enterprise transformation, artificial intelligence, and the remaking of most industries over time by machine learning ,” according to Jurvetson.