Foundry Group, an 18-year-old enterprise agency with practically $3.5 billion in belongings below administration, has quietly determined to close down and never elevate any extra funds. The transfer was surprising contemplating that the agency introduced a $500 million fund final yr.

Boulder, Colorado-based Foundry first introduced that its present fund could be its final on January 19. The enterprise agency had been investing since 2007, based on Crunchbase, and had introduced the $500 million fund, Foundry 2022 — its eighth — in Could of 2023.

Through the years, Foundry has invested in additional than 200 firms and practically 50 enterprise corporations, based on co-founder and associate Seth Levine. It had backed the likes of Fitbit, Zynga and AvidXchange, amongst others.

When TechCrunch reached out to Levine, he declined to touch upon the agency’s choice to shutter, and as an alternative pointed to blogs he’d written. He did, nevertheless, verify an unspecified variety of departures on the agency, though he didn’t make clear in the event that they had been layoffs or voluntary.

In a single weblog, he acknowledged that the agency’s choice to fully shut down was an uncommon one.

He wrote: “Whereas VC corporations not often make selections like this, it’s exactly what we deliberate to do after we began Foundry in 2006. From our founding, we deliberately determined to not construct a legacy or generational agency — one meant to stay past the tenure of the founding companions. As an alternative, we supposed to concentrate on the work of investing, re-evaluating every potential new fund as our fundraising cadence required…We’ve had a number of moments during the last decade the place we thought the fund we had been elevating may be our final. Every of these instances, after reflection and dialogue, we determined to boost one other fund. However not this time. Foundry 2022 can be our final fund.”

What’s subsequent

Foundry nonetheless has 33% to 40% neglected of that fund to speculate, Levine advised the Denver Enterprise Journal. In his weblog, Levine mentioned particularly the agency plans to “proceed to steer Sequence A and B financings” out of the fund.

The transfer raises questions for its portfolio firms. Foundry says it should proceed to speculate out of its latest fund, however for founders, accepting capital from a agency that’s winding down is a threat and will make securing follow-on funding that a lot tougher. 

In the meantime, Levine maintained to the Denver Enterprise Journal that he expects all of the funds to be deployed by round 2026 and that the agency will then “nonetheless work with companies during which it has investments.”

In his private weblog, Levine wrote: “We raised our final Foundry fund at a fortuitous time, simply because the markets cooled off (it’s a good time to be investing), and we’ve one other two years or so of recent investments to look ahead to. To not point out a decade or longer of labor with the portfolio after that.”

The investor additionally advised the Denver Enterprise Journal that he would “be with Foundry till its work is totally performed,” including that co-founder Brad Feld and associate Chris Moody “plan to do the identical.” He couldn’t say what the opposite companions would “rise up to within the subsequent few years.”

In her personal weblog publish Foundry associate Jaclyn Hester wrote that she was “focused on supporting our portfolio and main new early-stage rounds as we deploy the rest of the 2022 fund over the following few years.”

Foundry just isn’t the one enterprise agency to just lately unexpectedly shut down. In December, Boston-based OpenView abruptly introduced it might cease investing in new firms lower than a yr after elevating $570 million for its seventh fund.