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.
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/