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Long-time Amazon executive Jeff Blackburn, who oversaw the tech giant’s investments, has joined the firm as a partner.
Silicon Valley investment firm Bessemer Venture Partners has closed two new funds totalling $3.3bn.
The firm, which made early bets on LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitch, has secured commitments from limited partners for two funds called BVP XI at $2.5bn and BVP Century II at $825m.
The former is the firm’s largest fund to date and will focus on early-stage investments in healthcare, enterprise and consumer tech. The latter will focus on follow on investments in growth-stage companies.
Bessemer has several offices in the US, Europe and Asia in order to find investments in several markets.
With the new funds in tow, the firm has added a new partner in Jeff Blackburn, a former senior vice-president at Amazon, who left the e-commerce giant earlier this week after more than 20 years and was a close lieutenant of Jeff Bezos.
At Amazon, he oversaw business development for several years, which involved managing Amazon’s investments in other companies and its acquisition strategy, giving him a keen eye for identifying target companies for deals.
“He oversaw dozens of Amazon’s minority investments and more than a hundred acquisitions across almost every business line from retail to Kindle/Echo/Alexa to AWS,” Bessemer said in a statement.
“As partner, Jeff will apply the same innovative mindset and world-class experience to invest in and help customer-focused entrepreneurs from early [stage] to growth.”
Bessemer has also promoted four of its existing investors to the roles of partners. They are Andrew Hedin, whose investments have had a particular focus on health, Tess Hatch, who has often closed deals in the areas of mobility, transport and space, Mike Droesch, who looks at IT and enterprise tech deals, and Mary D’Onofrio, who has specialised in cloud investments.
