The New $800M Fund Shaking Up Silicon Valley Venture Capital

Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

Tech News, News, Business

4.4 • 18 Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Two former Benchmark investors are pitching something you don’t usually see this soon: a joint, $800 million AI fund—less than a year after each left to raise smaller, founder-led vehicles on their own. Victor Lazarte left the Silicon Valley fund in July 2025 after backing companies like Mercor, Heygen and Applied Compute in his two-year stretch as a partner. After exiting Benchmark, he quickly raised $200 million for his own fund, VL. Now, Lazarte is pitching a much bigger fund to make bets on early and growth stage startups. He’s telling prospective limited partners he plans to raise a new fund called Diffusion and co-manage it with Kris Fredrickson, according to several investors who say they were pitched on the effort. The target is roughly $800 million, one of the larger first-time venture raises of the year. Fredrickson started his investing career at Benchmark before moving to hedge fund Coatue, where he backed companies like Instacart, Chime and Scale AI. Forbes reported last July that Fredrickson had raised $175 million for his own fund, Verified, to back growth stage AI startups like legal platform Harvey and search engine Perplexity. By Iain Martin, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Some follow the noise.
0:03.3	Bloomberg follows the money.
0:05.4	Because behind every headline is a bottom line.
0:09.3	Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings,
0:13.8	there's a money side to every story.
0:16.5	And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss.
0:20.8	Get the money side of the story.
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0:52.4	Today on Forbes, former benchmark investors, Luzarte and Fredrickson,
0:58.5	aim big with $800 million AI fund. Less than a year after two former benchmark investors,
1:06.7	each left to raise smaller founder-led vehicles on their own. The two are pitching something you don't usually see this soon.
1:13.6	A joint $800 million AI fund, first reported by Forbes on Tuesday.
1:20.6	Victor Lazarte left the Silicon Valley Fund benchmark in July 2025
1:25.6	after backing companies like Mercor, Hagen, and
1:29.8	applied compute in his two-year stretch as a partner. After exiting benchmark, he quickly raised
1:36.1	$200 million for his own fund, VL. Now, Lazzarte is pitching a much bigger fund to make bets on
	...

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