Andreessen Horowitz creates ‘Perennial’ evergreen fund amid market slowdown

Andreessen Horowitz, the storied venture firm known for being an early investor in some of the biggest tech companies including Airbnb, Coinbase and GitHub, has created a new fund to continue growing its business despite the slowdown in traditional VC funding.

The evergreen fund is titled a16z Perennial Venture Capital Fund, according to a filing made with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The filing shows that the fund will operate from Andreessen Horowitz’s Menlo Park office.

Additionally, the venture firm has registered its Perennial Management business with the U.S. regulator. It has been listed as a “large advisory firm” with a regulatory AUM of $105 million, per an ADV filing with the SEC.

The business unit has been registered with 18 high-net-worth individuals as its clients. It will offer advisory services such as portfolio management for individuals, small businesses and pooled investment vehicles as well as private fund managers, wealth management advisers and financial planners, the filing shows.

Andreessen Horowitz has eight employees in its new unit, including chief investment officer Michel Del Buono, who was hired last year, per the filing.

An Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the development.

In August last year, Bloomberg reported on Del Buono’s hiring and Andreessen Horowitz’s plans to start wealth-management services. The news agency said the firm was looking to manage the wealth of its partners and the executives of its portfolio companies.

Overall, the plan seems to let the venture firm keep managing its shares in publicly traded companies instead of distributing them to LPs, similar to what Sequoia Capital did with its evergreen fund in 2021. The timing for Andreessen Horowitz could be particularly promising, given the public market is experiencing a significant decline due to macroeconomic factors and that the value of public shares has decreased due to the economic turmoil, giving them more upside potential.

Like other VC firms worldwide, Andreessen Horowitz is not seeing significant growth from its startup investments because of the overall market slowdown. Similar to a select pool of other fund managers, Andreessen Horowitz recently started openly courting capital from Saudi Arabia as U.S. companies are struggling with tighter lending and higher inflation. The firm also started creating a fund-of-funds to invest in smaller VC funds to expand its already expansive network and ostensibly get a look at more of the most promising early-stage companies ahead of some of its rivals.