When Greylock raised $1 billion for its 14th investment in 2014, the company said it will focus on two areas: the enterprise cloud and the mobile market. Now, the fifteenth investment in this VC company will focus more on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality.
Two years later, the trend of science and technology has changed, and the legendary venture capital firm in Silicon Valley has raised a billion dollars for its 15th investment. They hope to invest in the future of emerging technologies.
In an interview with Business Insider, Greyloc's partner James Slavet said: "These areas (artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality) are now more mature. The $100 billion problem is where are we going? Can you find the next real big company. How different are they from the areas we used to invest in?"
Greylock has achieved great success in two core areas: consumers and businesses. According to Xiaobian, they have invested in four listed companies with market capitalization of more than US$10 billion: Facebook, LinkedIn, Palo Alto Networks and Workday. Greylock also invested in more than 80 other companies, such as social networking Nextdoor and startups Cloudera and Docker.
"Of course, a large part of what we will do is related to the business of consumer networks, which can be a market or social platform type of business." Slavet said, "In terms of business, we have continued to invest in the past several times. Security, cloud infrastructure, and SAAS invest heavily."
Slavet is frank, Greylock also intends to inspect emerging technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning, because these fields may create a multi-billion dollar company.
Slavet said: "A lot of entrepreneurs are looking for new opportunities, which is very different from 15 years ago, when you can get customers through Google search, or you can get customers through the App Store a few years ago. What is the distribution channel?"
Although Greylock may explore new areas, they will still be rooted in the United States. Some of their major competitors, such as Sequoia Capital, will continue to invest in the international community.
Slavet pointed out: "If you are not in this country, it is very difficult for you to make a successful investment in this country. We believe that it is very difficult to make successful investments by flying around the world, so we focus on the technology of the United States and consumer companies. Helping these companies grow and expand. Focusing on this is the best way we can successfully achieve returns."