Sequoia Capital has raised approximately $10 billion in new funds while announcing a sweeping organizational restructuring that will close its London office, discontinue two founder investment programmes and merge its early-stage and growth investment teams.
The changes, outlined in a memo titled “The Sequoia of Tomorrow” posted on X on Wednesday, mark a shift away from the venture capital firm’s expansion across multiple regions and investment programmes towards a smaller partnership focused more heavily on Silicon Valley.
Sequoia is also ending its Arc accelerator and Scouts programme, flattening its partnership structure and scrapping its traditional Monday partner meeting. The firm said the changes followed an assessment of an expansionary period lasting roughly two decades, during which it established multiple businesses across different geographies.
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According to the memo, that expansion created unintended organizational complexity and additional layers of hierarchy. The restructuring is intended to bring the firm closer to an earlier operating model built around a smaller team and more direct engagement with founders.
The scale of the changes is significant because several of the programmes being discontinued helped establish Sequoia’s reputation for identifying promising startups at an early stage and building relationships with entrepreneurs before they became major companies.
The closure of the Scouts programme and Arc accelerator marks a notable change in how Sequoia intends to source investments.
Launched around 2009, the Scouts programme allowed founders, operators and other industry participants to make small investments on Sequoia’s behalf. The model expanded the firm’s reach beyond its partners, giving it access to entrepreneurs and investment opportunities through people already connected to emerging startups.
Several prominent technology companies were introduced to Sequoia through this network. Jason Calacanis helped bring Uber to the firm, while Sam Altman introduced Stripe. Early scouts also included Airbnb Chief Executive Brian Chesky and Dropbox founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston.
The programme became influential across Silicon Valley, with other venture firms adopting similar models to identify investment opportunities through networks of founders and operators.
Arc, launched in March 2022, was Sequoia’s accelerator programme for pre-seed and seed-stage companies. It operated several cohorts annually, with each running for seven weeks. Participating startups received between $500,000 and $1 million in initial funding.
The accelerator was designed to give Sequoia an earlier relationship with founders, placing it in competition with established programmes such as Y Combinator.
Ending both initiatives means the firm is moving away from a broad model of discovering and supporting founders through multiple channels. Its new approach, as described in the memo, is to concentrate resources on fewer people and investment activities.
Sequoia is also closing its London office, which opened in 2020. The firm said several people would leave as a result, explaining that it no longer considered a permanent local presence necessary to invest in European companies.
“We simply don’t see the need for a local presence,” the memo said, while maintaining that Europe would continue to produce “outlier founders” whom the firm could support from the San Francisco Bay Area.
The decision has implications for Sequoia’s European investment network. Luciana Lixandru, who joined from Accel in 2020 as the firm’s first European partner, said she had been offered a move to San Francisco but declined.
“Europe is where my family is, and where I want to build,” she wrote on X. Lixandru said she would remain a partner, retain her board positions and continue investing personally in European founders.
The closure also follows similar moves by other major US venture capital firms. Andreessen Horowitz closed its London office last year, while Coatue shut its London operation in 2024. Sequoia has not announced an end to investments in European startups, but the decision places greater emphasis on its Bay Area base.
Smaller Partnership and Return to a Unified Investment Team
The restructuring also changes how Sequoia manages its investment operations. The firm is abandoning the distinction between early-stage and growth investment teams, opting instead for a unified structure.
Its memo identifies seven general partners who will primarily own and operate the firm: co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, alongside Andrew Reed, Shaun Maguire, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang and David Cahn, who joined in 2023.
Former Workday Chief Executive Carl Eschenbach, who returned as a full-time partner in March, is also back in the firm’s operations. Sequoia described the renewed involvement of veteran investor Doug Leone as having “reinvigorated the GOAT.”
Other personnel changes accompany the restructuring. Jess Lee, Sequoia’s first female partner and an early-stage investor who oversaw Arc, is now listed as chief product officer rather than as an investor on the firm’s website. Stephanie Zhan, who joined in 2015, has left Sequoia and announced plans to establish her own venture capital firm.
The firm is also ending its Monday partner meeting, a longstanding routine in venture capital. Sequoia said the decision was based on the view that founders operate continuously and their investors should organize themselves around that pace rather than rely on fixed weekly meetings.
The changes follow a longer period of organizational restructuring at Sequoia. In 2023, the firm separated from its China, India and Southeast Asia businesses, which subsequently became HongShan and Peak XV. The move ended a two-decade arrangement in which the regional operations operated under the Sequoia name.
The departure of former senior steward Roelof Botha also marked a major leadership transition. Botha was replaced last year in a handover that placed Lin and Grady at the center of the firm’s leadership. He subsequently severed his ties with Sequoia and joined the board of SpaceX.
Sequoia’s latest restructuring is therefore more than a series of cost or personnel adjustments. Some believe it represents a decision about the firm’s geographic reach, investment model and internal management as competition for high-growth startups continues.
The firm acknowledged that dismantling established programmes and changing its organizational structure carries risks, saying in its memo: “It is scary to break something that’s already working just fine.”
Here is Sequoia’s post in full:
We live in a world of accelerating change. The best founders reinvent themselves over and over again. We must do the same.
It’s been a year since our generational transition. We’ve been busy! We’re no longer evolving the Sequoia of yesterday; we are now building the Sequoia of tomorrow.
Here are a few of the changes we’ve made, and what they mean for founders.
Focus We are best at high-conviction, highly selective venture capital investing. This is our focus. We have removed much of the complexity associated with the Sequoia Capital Fund, sunset our batch accelerator (Arc) and Scouts programs, and streamlined both operating and investing teams. Putting more energy behind fewer people and things means better support for the founders we back.
One Team There is no more “Early & Growth”. There is only Sequoia. We are one team, operating under one shared mission. This should make things more seamless for founders as they go from stage to stage.
London We are closing our London office, which means several people will be leaving Sequoia. This is not about the team — they are excellent. We simply don’t see the need for a local presence. We believe that Europe will continue to produce outlier founders and companies, and that we can continue to provide world class support from our home base in the Bay Area.
Partners We are coming out of a ~20 year expansionary phase, during which we built multiple businesses in multiple geos. One unintended side effect was hierarchy; it required real management to run the operating side of our business, and this crept over into the investing team. We’ve made several internal changes that have the effect of flattening the partnership. This allows every partner to flourish, and every founder to receive the full benefit of Team Sequoia — regardless of who your lead partner happens to be.
Firepower We’ve welcomed two rising stars (Liam and Sonali) and one transcendentally talented founder & operator (Dev). We’ve reunited with a legendary leader (Carl) and reinvigorated the GOAT (Doug). We’ve elevated and empowered killer operators: Hem, Natalie, Rishi, Stacey, and Theresa. We’ve raised ~$10Bn in new funds. Talent and capital are two of the key ingredients in building legendary companies. Our talent density and capital base are stronger than ever.
24/7 There is no more Monday partner meeting cycle. Founders operate 24/7, and so do we. Founders shouldn’t have to adhere to our process — we will do our best to adhere to yours.
Reinventing Ourselves
Some of these changes were obvious. Others less so. Many were hard. It is scary to break something that’s already working just fine, and it is painful to say goodbye to great people. We ask founders to do the right thing even when it is hard, and we are committed to doing the same.
Some things remain unchanged. Our mission is to help the daring build legendary companies, from idea to IPO and beyond. Our objective function is not scale, but quality: delivering the best possible returns to LPs, and being the best possible partner to founders.
The Sequoia of Tomorrow
Excellence is a moving target, so we will always be changing. But for now, this is Sequoia.
We have seven General Partners who own and operate our organization, and we are on offense: building our business so that we can support you in building yours. We are true believers, and as we enter a golden age of multiple tectonic shifts in parallel (AI, space, biology, reindustrialization, and perhaps more), we are so fired up for what’s to come. Let’s build something legendary together!
— Alfred, Andrew, David, Konstantine, Pat, Shaun, and Sonya, on behalf of Team Sequoia