Accel Prepares to Pour $5 Billion Into Global AI Breakouts

Venture capital firm Accel has raised $5 billion in late-stage capital to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) companies.

The company’s partners said in a Tuesday (April 14) blog post that AI has reduced the distance between having an idea and scaling it, that the market is expanding to match that change and that the defining companies of the next decade are taking shape now.

“In our view, this market cycle represents the early phase of a broader transformation,” the partners said in the post. “We’ve seen big shifts before, and they tend to build on each other. But the momentum behind AI is entirely new. Markets are refreshing, opportunities are broadening, and the next decade will be one of the most meaningful in modern technology.”

Accel is supporting founders with its platform that has supported companies such as Atlassian, CrowdStrike, Flipkart and Slack since their inception and that is now working with companies like Lovable, Vercel and Cyera, according to the post.

The firm’s portfolio now includes more than 800 companies around the world and across all stages, per the post.

“As these companies scale, the late-stage vehicle ensures that our partnership only strengthens,” the Accel partners said. “We didn’t buy our way into the late stage; our portfolio brought us here. This is for the breakouts, the winners, the generational stories.”

Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing Accel Partner Matt Weigand, that Accel will dedicate $4 billion to its fifth Leaders fund, which focuses on late-stage startups and with which it plans to make between 20 and 25 investments with an average check size of $200 million.

The firm will dedicate another $650 million to a sidecar fund that gives limited partners more exposure to its biggest investments, according to the report.

These new funds are added to Accel’s existing $31 billion in assets under management, as of last year, per the report.

PYMNTS reported in December that Silicon Valley’s AI startups raised a record $150 billion in 2025. That funding level surpassed the previous record of $92 billion set in 2021.

On April 7, it was reported that North American AI startups pulled in $221 billion in the first quarter, a figure that was about six times larger than that of the previous quarter.