Venture firm CRV returns $275 million citing overvaluation of mature startups

CRV, a more than 50-year-old venture firm, is returning to investors $275 million from its $500 million Select fund, which backs later-stage rounds of existing portfolio companies, the New York Times reported.

The firm is one of the first Silicon Valley outfits to return committed capital to investors. (We reported yesterday that India’s largest venture investor, Peak XV, is slashing the size of a handful of funds.)

CRV partners said it realized that investing in follow-on rounds of many of its companies would lower its overall returns.

The firm raised the Select fund along with a $1 billion fund for early-stage startups in 2022. CRV said its next early-stage fund will be smaller and it doesn’t plan to raise another Select fund.

This isn’t the first time CRV has reduced its fund size. In 2002, after the dot-com bubble burst, it cut a fund from $1.2 billion to $450 million. Other firms to slash their fund sizes in that era included Kleiner Perkins, Accel, and Redpoint Ventures.