Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers debuted three funds Thursday totaling $900 million to invest in areas such as information technology, life sciences, green energy, and pandemic preparedness.
The prominent Menlo Park, California-based VC firm formed the KPCB XII fund, aimed at investing $600 million over approximately three years in innovative entrepreneurial companies in IT, life sciences, and other fast-growing industries.
Among the initiatives KPCB plans to back are mobile and web services, personalized medicine, medical devices, communications, and semiconductors.
In addition, the firm is starting a $100-million fund aimed at backing green technologies. KPCB has already funded such companies over the past five years, as battery developer Lilliputian and solar cell maker Miasolé.
“Greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century,” said KPCB general partner John Doerr.
The partners investing in KPCB XII include some of the same people who backed the previous fund, KPCB XI. Among them are Brook Byers, John Denniston, Mr. Doerr, Juliet Flint, Joe Lacob, Ray Lane, Aileen Lee, Matt Murphy, Ajit Nazre, Ted Schlein, Risa Stack, and Trae Vassallo.
The fund also includes some new partners: Bill Joy (former Sun Microsystems chief scientist and Java inventor), Randy Komisar, Ying Lee, Dana Mead Jr., Ellen Pao, and Dr. Beth Seidenberg.
Pandemic Defense
In addition, KPCB set up a third fund, the $200-million KPCB Pandemic and Bio Defense Fund. The goal is to finance ways to speed up worldwide pandemic preparedness and global health. The fund will focus on surveillance and detection, diagnostics, vaccines, and drugs.
“We will invest in companies developing fundamentally new platforms for detection, prevention, and treatment of global, pathogenic infectious diseases,” said Mr. Byers. He has been a VC investor since 1972.
KPCB plans to work with biotech companies, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies, as well as other VC firms to encourage them to invest in pandemic preparedness as the world prepares for the spread of avian flu and other diseases.
The fund’s first investment is in BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, a Birmingham, Alabama company that has developed Peramivir, an influenza antiviral drug (see FDA Fast-Tracks Flu Drug). Dr. Seidenberg is joining the board of BioCryst.
KPCB has a good track record with its investments. The firm began investing in the life sciences field in 1977 when it was the founding investor in Genentech. Since that time, KPCB has invested in 100 life sciences companies in areas such as cardiology, cancer, neurology, and immune system diseases.
In the tech industry, since 1972 KPCB has funded many prominent companies, including America Online, Amazon.com, Citrix Systems, Compaq Computer, Electronic Arts, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Lotus, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, VeriSign, and Xylinx.