Accel (company)

For the acquired software company, see Accel Technologies.

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London,^[1][2] and India.^[3]

Accel

Formerly	Accel Partners
Company type	Private
Industry	Venture capital
Founded	1983; 42 years ago (1983)
Headquarters	Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Products	Venture capital Growth capital
Number of employees	300 (2024)
Website	www.accel.com

History

In 1983, Accel was founded by Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz.^[4] The co-founders developed the firm's "prepared mind" investment philosophy based on the Louis Pasteur quote "chance favors the prepared mind",^[5] which they say requires "deep focus"^[6] and a disciplined and informed approach to investing.^[7]

In 2005, Accel Partners under the leadership of Jim Breyer, invested $12.7 million in Facebook, valuing the company at $98 million.^[8] This investment became one of the most lucrative in venture capital history with Accel’s stake increasing to $8 billion by 2012.^[9]

Investments and fundraises

In January 2025, Accel raised $650 million early stage fund for startups in India and South East Asia^[10]

Accel focuses on enterprise, SaaS, and consumer investments and works with seed, early, growth-stage companies worldwide.^[11] The firm's growth capital investments focus on more developed companies that require a larger amount of capital to expand their business. Notable investments include:

Notable investments

Year	Companies
2020s	Bumble,[12] Klaviyo,[13] Linear,[14] Synthesia[15] H Company,[16] Vercel,[17] Tailscale[18]
2010s	1Password,[19] Atlassian,[20] CrowdStrike,[21] Deliveroo,[22] Docusign[23] Dropcam,[24] Fiverr[25] Frame.io,[26] Freshworks[27] Jet.com,[28] Lynda,[29] Miro,[30] Qualtrics,[31] Scale AI,[32] Segment,[33] Spotify,[34] Supercell[35] Squarespace,[36] Swiggy,[37] Tenable[38],UiPath[39] Venmo[40]
2000s	Cloudera,[41] Dropbox,[42] Facebook,[43] Flipkart (acquired by Walmart),[44] Groupon,[45] Slack,[46] Kayak[47]
1980s-1990s	MetroPCS,[48] UUNet,[49] Polycom,[50] RealNetworks[51]

Geographies

Accel has offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, California;^[52] London, England; and Bangalore, India.^[53]

In 2000, Accel entered a joint venture with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts to form Accel-KKR, an independently operated technology-focused private equity investment firm focused on control investments in middle-market companies.^[54] Similarly, in the same year, Accel partnered with IDG Capital to create IDG-Accel, a joint venture focusing on early-stage and growth investments in the Chinese market.^[55] Both Accel-KKR and IDG-Accel now operate independently.