500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) is a global venture capital firm and startup accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai and headquartered in Palo Alto / Silicon Valley, California. The firm invests from pre-seed to pre-IPO in globally ambitious technology founders, built on the belief that "talent lives everywhere, but capital and opportunity does not." 500 Global pioneered a "lots of little bets" seed strategy, backing hundreds of companies per fund with smaller initial checks, and has grown one of the industry's largest truly global seed portfolios: 3,000+ companies across 80+ countries with $300B+ in cumulative portfolio valuation, including 35+ companies valued at $1B+ and 160+ valued at more than $100M. It runs regional and thematic practices spanning Southeast Asia, Latin America, MENA, Africa, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Eurasia, plus a Sustainable Growth strategy (health, climate, agriculture, gender, education), flagship accelerator programs, and the VC Unlocked investor-education program that has trained 1,400+ investors. As of April 30, 2025 the firm reported approximately $2.3B in assets under management. Notable investments include Canva, Grab, Talkdesk, Credit Karma, Twilio, and Bukalapak.
Firms are ranked by cumulative portfolio strength — how many highly-rated API companies they've backed, weighted by tier across composite quality and agent-readiness. The averages below are a secondary read on the typical company in the book.
500 Global has 2,108 portfolio companies tracked on the APIs.io network, of which 430 (20%) publish APIs indexed here. The remaining 1,677 are tracked as profiles without a published API on the network.
Its highest-rated API providers on the network are Stripe, DrChrono, SendGrid, Catamorphic, Twilio.
Portfolio on the Network
Portfolio companies that publish APIs indexed on APIs.io, grouped by their
API Evangelist rating. Exemplar and Strong are expanded by default.
Exemplar13Complete, well-documented, and agent-ready
The 1717 portfolio companies with APIs in the catalog, backed by
500 Global, scored on the Kin Score. Every figure below is computed from
the catalog — nothing here is written.
A facet is averaged over the members that carry it, not over the whole cohort — the
“Scored” column is that count. Averaging an absent facet as zero would score our own
coverage gaps as the providers’ posture.
What this cohort publishes
Artifact
This cohort
Catalog
Difference
MCP server (any)
7%
11%
-4
MCP server (first-party)
9%
13%
-4
Agent Skills
0%
0%
0
OAuth scopes
6%
12%
-6
Security
94%
96%
-2
Arazzo workflows
1%
2%
-1
Governance rules
2%
13%
-11
mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.
This roster declares 2107 members; 2084
resolve to a provider in the catalog and 1717 carry a score
(82%). The figures above describe the scored members only.Generated from the catalog build of
22 September 2026, across 27674
providers, using the same computation served by the
APIs.io cohort API. Briefs are published for rosters of
5 or more scored providers; below that a distribution is not meaningful.
aid: 500-global
name: 500 Global
description: >-
500 Global (formerly 500 Startups) is a global venture capital firm and startup accelerator founded
in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai and headquartered in Palo Alto / Silicon Valley, California.
The firm invests from pre-seed to pre-IPO in globally ambitious technology founders, built on the belief
that "talent lives everywhere, but capital and opportunity does not." 500 Global pioneered a
"lots of little bets" seed strategy, backing hundreds of companies per fund with smaller initial checks,
and has grown one of the industry's largest truly global seed portfolios: 3,000+ companies across 80+
countries with $300B+ in cumulative portfolio valuation, including 35+ companies valued at $1B+ and 160+
valued at more than $100M. It runs regional and thematic practices spanning Southeast Asia, Latin America,
MENA, Africa, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Eurasia, plus a Sustainable Growth strategy (health, climate,
agriculture, gender, education), flagship accelerator programs, and the VC Unlocked investor-education
program that has trained 1,400+ investors. As of April 30, 2025 the firm reported approximately $2.3B in
assets under management. Notable investments include Canva, Grab, Talkdesk, Credit Karma, Twilio, and Bukalapak.
deliveryModel:
model: unknown
open_source: false
commercial: false
callable_host: false
label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
confidence: low
source:
- none
generated: '2026-08-28'
method: derived
accessModel:
pricing: unknown
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: false
public: false
label: Unknown
confidence: low
source: []
generated: '2026-07-22'
method: derived
image: https://500.co/favicon.ico
x-type: venture-capital
x-category: Venture Capital
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
tags:
- Venture Capital
- Accelerator
- Pre-Seed
- Seed
- Series A
- Growth
- Fintech
- Software-as-a-Service
- Developer Tools
- Artificial Intelligence
- Emerging Markets
- Global
- Silicon Valley
tags_raw:
- Venture Capital
- Accelerator
- Pre-Seed
- Seed
- Series A
- Growth
- Fintech
- SaaS
- Developer Tools
- Artificial Intelligence
- Emerging Markets
- Global
- Silicon Valley
apis: []
common:
- type: Website
url: https://500.co/
- type: Portfolio
url: https://500.co/portfolio
- type: Portfolio
url: portfolio/500-global-portfolio.yml
- type: Team
url: https://500.co/team
- type: Team
url: team/500-global-team.yml
- type: InvestmentThesis
url: https://500.co/funds
- type: Blog
url: https://500.co/content
- type: News
url: https://500.co/content
- type: Newsletter
url: https://500.co/newsletter-sign-up
- type: Pitch
url: https://500.co/contact
- type: Jobs
url: https://500.co/careers
- type: Contact
url: https://500.co/contact
- type: Crunchbase
url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/500-startups
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://linkedin.com/company/500global
- type: Twitter
url: https://x.com/500GlobalVC
- type: Features
data:
- "Stage: Pre-seed to pre-IPO (seed-focused accelerator model)"
- "Typical check: smaller initial seed checks under a 'lots of little bets' strategy"
- "Sectors: technology-agnostic - fintech, SaaS, developer tools, AI/ML, e-commerce, big data, mobile, consumer"
- "Geography: Global - US, Southeast Asia, Latin America, MENA, Africa, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Eurasia (80+ countries)"
- "AUM: ~$2.3B (as of April 30, 2025)"
- "Portfolio: 3,000+ companies; 35+ valued $1B+; 160+ valued $100M+; $300B+ cumulative valuation"
- "Founded: 2010 (as 500 Startups; rebranded 500 Global in 2021)"
- "HQ: Palo Alto / Silicon Valley, California, USA"
sources:
- https://500.co/
- https://500.co/funds
- https://www.cbinsights.com/investor/500-startups
updated: '2026-07-17'
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: info@apievangelist.com
url: https://apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
url: http://apisjson.org
- FN: 500 Global
url: https://500.co/
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