David Sacks' Craft Ventures targets $1B fund after White House exit
What's the deal? Craft Ventures, the VC firm helmed by former White House AI czar David Sacks, is raising its first fund since Sacks stepped away from his Trump administration role earlier this year, according to a securities filing and two people with knowledge of the effort. The firm is targeting around $1 billion, one of the people said.
Why now? The raise is Craft's first since Sacks left his government position in March. It would bring the total the firm has raised from limited partners to over $4 billion.
What's the endgame? The fund marks a shift away from Craft's two-fund structure to a single vehicle focused on companies at Series A and later. Craft last raised $1.3 billion in late 2023, split between a $712 million early-stage fund and a $608 million growth fund.
Sacks, a former PayPal chief operating officer, co-founded Craft in 2017 with crypto entrepreneur Bill Lee. The firm has backed AI medical startup OpenEvidence, coding assistant Replit, developer platform Supabase, and defence tech shipbuilder Saronic.
Its early funds also held shares in SpaceXDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which Sacks and Lee first backed in 2009. SpaceX's June IPO paved the way for other investors to raise new funds.
Refocusing: Craft trimmed staff last spring, laying off half a dozen employees who helped startups recruit talent, in a move to concentrate on later-stage investing.
What could go wrong? Sacks' government role forced him and the firm to divest over $200 million in digital assets to avoid conflicts of interest, selling all liquid crypto plus Coinbase and Robinhood stock before Trump's second term. His rising public profile, however, could help attract investors and founders, especially those selling tech to the government.
The signal: Sacks now co-chairs a presidential council on science and technology alongside Marc Andreessen, Sergey Brin, and Jensen Huang. His deepening government ties test whether political visibility can be turned into fundraising and dealflow advantage.
Read more: The Information
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