While VCs crowd into San Francisco, Endeavor Catalyst raises $320M for founders ‘elsewhere’

Endeavor Catalyst has closed its fifth fund with $320 million in capital commitments, bringing the agency’s complete property beneath administration to greater than $850 million. The elevate is nice information for founders exterior the Bay Area who danger getting missed as extra funds focus squarely on AI firms in Silicon Valley.

Catalyst is the enterprise arm of Endeavor, a New York-based international nonprofit that has spent 30 years supporting founders exterior main tech hubs. (It calls all these different locations “elsewhere” all through its advertising supplies.)

The fund is run by managing associate Allen Taylor, a 20-year veteran of the group, and managing director Jackie Carmel, who joined Endeavor 12 years in the past, together with a 16-person group. The official common associate, although, is Endeavor itself. What which means, says Linda Rottenberg, who co-founded Endeavor and helped begin Endeavor Catalyst in 2012, is that “half of the fund’s income return to Endeavor, so each funding helps the subsequent technology of founders who’re constructing elsewhere.”

The bar for these founders is fairly excessive. An individual first has to get into Endeavor’s community, the place she or he can entry Endeavor’s mentoring and intensive community, and that’s arduous. Last yr, the group says it screened greater than 10,000 candidates and picked 88. The community now has greater than 3,100 entrepreneurs in over 50 international locations.

When a type of founders’ firms raises at the very least $5 million in a spherical led by one other institutional investor, Catalyst can take part on the identical phrases as that lead. The group tells TechCrunch that checks often run $1 million to $3 million however can’t exceed 10% of the spherical.

Over the subsequent few years, they plan to make 40 to 50 investments yearly, investing in as much as 150 firms altogether with this new fund, they are saying.

Taylor wouldn’t share numbers on cash-on-cash returns tied to its earlier funds, however he did level to some impressive-sounding numbers. Across all 5 funds, he says, Endeavor Catalyst has backed 437 firms in 44 trading floors. Eighty-three of these startups are at present valued at $1 billion or extra, he says, and the unit has seen 39 exits and 11 IPOs.

Some of the enterprise arm’s most dear holdings proper now embody four-year-old ElevenLabs, the maker of AI voice instruments that was lately valued at $22 billion in a secondary sale (it was based in Poland initially), and Bending Spoons, the 13-year-old Italy-based conglomerate that went public in July and that at present boasts a $26 billion market cap.

Other holdings embody New York-based Reflection AI (based by two former Google DeepMind researchers — one in all whom was born in Greece) that’s now valued at $25 billion; Checkout.com, whose founder is Swiss and that was valued final yr at $12 billion; the African funds roads firm Flutterwave, valued this summer season at $3.2 billion; and Replit, co-founded by Amjad Masad, who’s Palestinian-Jordanian. Replit snagged a $9 billion valuation earlier this yr.

Endeavor, the nonprofit, has particularly well-connected individuals related to it, together with board members Reid Hoffman; Nick Beim, a profession VC who has spent the final 25 years at Matrix Partners, then Venrock; and Edgar Bronfman Jr., the previous head of Warner Music and Seagram, who chairs Endeavor Global’s board.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is a longtime pal of Endeavor, too, together with showing routinely at Endeavor occasions. (Late final month in San Francisco, I sat down with him throughout a uncommon go to to the Bay Area meet with tech founders and Greek expatriates.)

Altogether, Endeavor Catalyst’s latest fund consists of 400 restricted companions, together with Hoffman, famed hedge supervisor Bill Ackman, and the Dutch funding group Prosus. According to Taylor, roughly 30% of these backers are Endeavor founders themselves, together with founders of Nubank, Revolut and Checkout.com.

While a lot consideration is paid to what’s occurring in San Francisco and its quick environs proper now, the bets of Endeavor Catalyst recommend what different traders could also be lacking, and Endeavor, with native groups and mentors in dozens of nations, appears notably properly positioned to see it.

Indeed, about 90% of the enterprise arm’s investments are exterior the U.S., it says. Europe is its fastest-growing area, with 12 new investments within the first half of 2026 in contrast with 14 in all of final yr, although Latin America remains to be the most important.

Repeat founders are additionally changing into a much bigger a part of the combo. Taylor tells TechCrunch that roughly 14% of Endeavor Catalyst’s fourth fund went to second firms began by Endeavor founders on the seed or Series A stage. With this new fund, the group expects that quantity will attain 20%

Pictured above: Endeavor co-founder Linda Rottenberg on stage in Turin, Italy, earlier this month.