Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
GV (Google Ventures)
Alphabet's wholly owned venture arm, founded in 2009 to invest Google's balance-sheet cash for financial return rather than strategic fit, which grew from a $100m-a-year experiment into a >$10bn manager that invests across software, consumer and, unusually for a corporate fund, life sciences, with a single LP and no fundraising cycle.
At a glance
- Founded
- March 2009, Mountain View, California (as Google Ventures)
- Founders
- Bill Maris (founding managing partner) with Rich Miner (Android co-founder); sponsored inside Google by David Drummond (SVP corporate development)
- Headquarters
- Mountain View / San Francisco; offices in New York, Boston/Cambridge and London
- Ownership / structure
- Wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.; Alphabet is the sole LP. Capital comes from annual or multi-year allocations, not closed-end funds. Renamed GV in 2015 when Google reorganised as Alphabet
- Leadership (2026)
- David Krane, CEO and managing partner (CEO since 2016). Senior partners include Krishna Yeshwant (managing partner, life sciences), Tom Hulme (GV Europe), Dave Munichiello, Tyson Clark, Crystal Huang, Erik Nordlander and Issi Rozen (roster as reported; verify 2026 titles)
- AUM / capital raised
- >$10bn under management (firm statements, 2024–25); typically invests >$1bn a year (reported); ~$5bn in 2019 (reported)
- Stage focus
- Seed through late stage; most often Series A–C. Sector split roughly between digital (enterprise, consumer, fintech, AI, frontier tech) and life sciences / health (historically about a third of capital, reported)
- Signature investments
- Uber, HubSpot, Nest (reported), Flatiron Health, Foundation Medicine, One Medical, GitLab, Lime, Verve Therapeutics, Blue Bottle Coffee; failures and disappointments: Homejoy, Lime's 2020 down round; famous pass: Theranos
9 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2011
HubSpot
Series D
2012
Blue Bottle Coffee
Early Venture Round
2013
Flatiron Health
Series A
2013
Homejoy
Series B
2013
One Medical
Series F
2013
Uber
Series C
2017
GitLab
Series C
2018
Lime
Growth Round
2019
Verve Therapeutics
Series A