Building Tomorrow’s Transformational Companies

Sequoia has launched a new venture fund and its sixth dedicated seed fund, and it’s framing both as a bet on the next generation of outlier founders. The firm’s message is simple: the earliest days matter most, because that’s when tiny ideas can still turn into something that looks like Apple, Nvidia, Stripe or Wiz in hindsight.

The pitch is broad, but the thread running through it is AI. Sequoia says the current moment is a once-in-a-generation chance to build through a platform shift as large as the internet, even if the path includes the usual mix of excitement and disappointment. That optimism shows up everywhere in the firm’s internal notes, from consumer apps built on video and image models to new infrastructure, security tools, and software for the next wave of applications.

There’s also a strong sense that old categories are getting rewritten rather than simply improved. The team points to stablecoins in consumer finance, healthcare that shifts toward more self-directed use of LLMs, voice and robotics, and e-commerce where AI agents could actually get paid to do work. One example stands out: Sequoia cites OpenAI’s recent service for research and buying products in chat as an early sign of where commerce might go.

The fund also reflects a more global and more physical view of the market than the usual Silicon Valley script. Sequoia says it wants founders from anywhere, highlights Europe as a product and engineering base for companies that want to go global, and sees momentum in Israel. On the technical side, it’s looking at silicon photonics, network security built around users and devices, data center security, and physical AI in a world where the physical economy still makes up most of global GDP.

There’s a lot of reach in this thesis, but that’s the point. Sequoia is not quietly funding maintenance software and calling it a day; it’s trying to position itself at the start of whatever AI turns into next.