Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - Investments

Investments

The company has been an early investor in more than 300 IT (information technology) and biotech firms, over the past thirty five years, including: Amazon.com, America Online, Brio Technology, Compaq, GenScript, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Google, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia, Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems, and Tandem. Current private investments include EEstor, Vertica, Chegg, shopkick, Zynga, Ocarina Networks, Plum District, Cooliris, Clean Power Finance and OptiMedica.

KPCB paid $4 million in 1994 for around 25% of Netscape and profited from Netscape's IPO and subsequent $4 billion acquisition by America Online. An investment of $8 million in Cerent was worth around $2 billion when the optical equipment maker was sold to Cisco Systems for $6.9 billion in August 1999.

In 1999, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital paid $25 million for 20% of Google—as of November 2008 Google's market capitalization stood at about $108 billion. As initial investors in Amazon.com KPCB scored returns of over 55,000% at the December 1999 peak of that stock, although the value of that investment was subsequently reduced by downturns in Amazon.com's stock price.

In March 2008, KPCB announced the iFund, a $100 million venture capital investment initiative that funds innovators developing applications, services, and components for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch platform, including shopkick, Path, Booyah and Shazam. KPCB's other mobile initiatives also include an investment in InMobi, a mobile ad network based out of Bangalore. KPCB doubled their iFund investment in April 2009 to $200 million.

In April 2008, it was reported that KPCB was raising funds for a $400 million growth-stage clean-technology fund. In October 2010, KPCB has launched a new $250 mn fund called sFund to fund the startups in the social space with Facebook, Zynga and Amazon.com as its co-investors.