Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund immediately introduced the launch of a $26 million fund to again early-stage startups, a transfer that formalizes his in depth historical past of angel investing. Axios first reported in February.
Akhund has been an energetic angel investor since 2016, backing over 350 startups at their earliest levels. His portfolio consists of corporations resembling Airtable, Utilized Instinct, Decagon, Gecko Robotics, Linear and Substack, amongst others.
“I like supporting entrepreneurs – whether or not it’s by means of constructing Mercury or investing. It offers me power, perspective, and deep satisfaction to assist formidable founders construct the longer term. A devoted fund permits me to go deeper and again founders extra meaningfully,” he tweeted immediately, additionally including that he’s nonetheless 100% centered on Mercury.
By launching a fund, the chief govt of one of the broadly used enterprise banking platforms globally hopes to offer extra structured help to founders whereas operationalizing his funding course of. This consists of bringing on Yash Doshi as a associate, an early investor in Mercury who has collaborated with Akhund on investments for a while.
The fund will concentrate on founders with a “confirmed observe file of constructing impactful merchandise,” goal alternatives in markets valued at $10 billion or extra, and again startups pursuing options “advancing humanity,” says the ex-part-time associate at Y Combinator.
This March, Mercury raised $300 million in main and secondary funding at a $3.5 billion post-money valuation, double its valuation from the final time it raised capital in 2021. Sequoia, Coatue, CRV, Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital and Marathon have been traders in that spherical.