Valar Ventures

Valar Ventures is a US-based venture capital fund founded by Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald and Peter Thiel in 2010.^[1] Historically, the majority of the firm's investments have been in technology startups based outside of Silicon Valley, including in Europe, the UK, the US and Canada. Valar Ventures originally spun out of Thiel Capital,^[2] Peter Thiel's global parent company based in San Francisco, and is now headquartered near Madison Square in Manhattan.^[3] The firm's namesake is the Valar of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, who are god-like immortal spirits that chose to enter the mortal world to prepare it for their living creations. Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald are the managing partners of the firm.^[4]

Valar Ventures

Company type	Private
Industry	Venture capital
Founded	2010; 15 years ago (2010)
Founders	Andrew McCormack James Fitzgerald Peter Thiel
Headquarters	New York City, U.S
Website	valar.com

Investments

Valar was notably the first venture fund to invest in Xero. The fund made its initial investment in Xero in October 2010 at a valuation of approximately $98 million.^[5] Since then, the firm has spearheaded successive rounds of investment in the company^[6] and Xero's market cap has grown to more than $4 billion as of February 2014.^[7]

Valar also led TransferWise's Series A and Series B financing rounds in January 2013 and April 2014, respectively. Following Valar's investment, Andreessen Horowitz led TransferWise's Series C.^[8]

Both Xero and TransferWise were investments out of Valar's $100M first fund, which was a series of special purpose vehicles, including a $32 million New Zealand specific fund.^[9] Additional investments in startups include: Breather, N26 (€10 million in a 2016 series A round^[10]), Descomplica, Dinda, Even, EyeEm, Granify, Homie, Lystable, Oppa, fintech Stash,^[11] TradeIt, and Vend. In 2018, Valar led Series A funding for Petal, a fintech start up^[12] and led a second round of funding for Coya, a German insurance startup.^[13]

In February 2019, Valar Ventures led a $28 million Series B funding round for Cluno, a mobility and fintech company based in Germany. Acton Capital Partners and Atlantic Labs, which both backed the company's Series A round, also participated.^[14]

In 2015 and 2016, financier and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein invested $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures.^[15][16] Leaked emails (released by the hacker group Handala, which "likely operates out of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence", according to Reuters^[17]) show that Epstein leveraged his relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to get access to Thiel.^[18] Epstein arranged for Barak to meet Thiel in New York in 2014. In 2016, Epstein pitched Reporty (later Carbyne) to Valar, but the proposal got rejected on account of being premature. Valar's McCormack said they would try to reengage when the startup was more developed. In 2018, the Founders Fund, another firm co-founded by Thiel, joined the $15 million Series B.^[18]