aid: benchmark
name: Benchmark
description: >-
  Benchmark is an American early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1995 by
  Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden, and
  headquartered at 140 New Montgomery Street in San Francisco, California (with a
  second office in Woodside). Benchmark is known for its distinctive equal
  partnership structure, where a small number of general partners share ownership
  and carry equally with no junior/senior hierarchy and no managing partner.
  The firm concentrates on leading first institutional rounds — typically Series A
  — and historically kept fund sizes small (around $425M) with a focus on
  consumer, marketplaces, social, open source, developer tools, infrastructure,
  enterprise software, fintech, crypto, and artificial intelligence. Benchmark
  has backed transformational companies including eBay, Uber, Twitter, Instagram,
  Snap, Dropbox, Discord, Docker, Zendesk, Confluent, Elastic, New Relic, Asana,
  Amplitude, Nextdoor, Stitch Fix, Yelp, OpenTable, Zillow, Red Hat, Airtable,
  Benchling, Cockroach Labs, Chainalysis, HackerOne, Contentful, Modern Treasury,
  Stytch, and, more recently, AI-native companies such as LangChain, Cerebras,
  MindsDB, Lovable, Legora, Gumloop, and Starcloud. In 2026 Benchmark broke with
  tradition to raise roughly $2B across two new vehicles, including its first-ever
  dedicated later-stage growth fund. This profile tracks Benchmark's identity and
  its portfolio graph across the API Evangelist network.
x-type: venture-capital
x-category: Venture Capital
image: https://logo.clearbit.com/benchmark.com
tags:
  - Venture Capital
  - Seed
  - Series A
  - Early Stage
  - Developer Tools
  - Infrastructure
  - Enterprise Software
  - Marketplaces
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Fintech
  - United States
url: >-
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/benchmark/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
specificationVersion: '0.20'
apis: []
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.benchmark.com/
  - type: Portfolio
    url: portfolio/benchmark-portfolio.yml
  - type: Team
    url: team/benchmark-team.yml
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/benchmark
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/benchmark-vc
  - type: Crunchbase
    url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/benchmark
  - type: Features
    data:
      - "Stage: Seed, Series A (early stage); later-stage growth fund added 2026"
      - "Typical check: leads first institutional rounds (historically single/low double-digit millions)"
      - "Sectors: consumer, marketplaces, social, open source, developer tools, infrastructure, enterprise software, fintech, crypto, AI"
      - "Geography: United States (San Francisco Bay Area centered)"
      - "Founded: 1995"
      - "Founders: Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, Val Vaden"
      - "HQ: 140 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA (also Woodside, CA)"
      - "Structure: equal partnership — partners share ownership and carry equally"
      - "2026: ~$2B raised across two funds, including first dedicated growth fund (~$1.25B)"
    sources:
      - https://www.benchmark.com/
      - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmark_(venture_capital_firm)
      - https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/03/benchmark-raises-its-first-ever-growth-fund-as-part-of-2b-capital-raise/
    updated: '2026-07-17'
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com
  - FN: APIs.json
    url: http://apisjson.org
  - FN: Benchmark
    url: https://www.benchmark.com/