Kevin Hartz’s A* Just Closed Its Third Fund With $450 Million
Kevin Hartz’s A* Fund III is officially closed, and it carries a clear message for the venture capital world: bigger is not always better.
Early-stage venture firm A* announced a $450 million Fund III on Tuesday, taking a generalist approach that backs companies across AI applications, fintech, healthcare, and security. The announcement lands at a time when billion-dollar megafunds have become the dominant story in Silicon Valley.
Discipline Over Scale
Kevin Hartz co-founded A* with former Coatue investor Bennett Siegel, and the firm’s $450 million raise is its largest to date but still a deliberate distance from the $15 billion fund Andreessen Horowitz unveiled earlier this year. Hartz has been blunt about the contrast, describing peers chasing mega-rounds as “buying in bulk.”
The average check size for Kevin Hartz’s A* Fund III will range between $3 million and $5 million, targeting at least 30 startups. Capital will be deployed over the next two to three years, consistent with the firm’s prior approach. Limited partners include nonprofits, foundations, and endowments, with Carnegie Mellon University among those publicly named.
A*’s first two funds have posted 36% and 58% net IRRs top-tier marks in venture showing the less-is-more strategy is working.
A* was founded in 2020, and previously raised a $315 million Fund II in 2024 and a $300 million Fund I in 2021. Hartz, a serial entrepreneur best known for co-founding Xoom, which PayPal acquired for $1.1 billion in 2015, and Eventbrite, the event-ticketing platform that went public in 2018.
Hartz has spent the past year backing younger founders, including a notable share of the previous fund deployed into companies led by teenagers a posture that has become A*’s distinct identity inside a venture industry tilting hard toward growth-stage allocation.
