Every decade or so, a disruptive technology comes along that kicks off a huge new wave of value creation, as well as broader changes in the ways we live and work. From the first dot-com boom to mobile computing and the cloud, we’ve navigated these profound shifts before—and are now ready to fully dive into the AI era.

Importantly, amid our great optimism about AI, we’re approaching it in a manner we feel is consistent with the firm’s core values and investment philosophy, which helped us generate more than $10 billion in liquidity over the last five years.

As we move forward, we’re armed with $3.25 billion in fresh capital, which we announced today with the closing of Battery Ventures XV.  It’s our 15^th main investment fund and will continue our strategy of backing global technology standouts across the stage spectrum, from seed and early to growth and buyout. This stage-diversified approach was a fairly differentiated strategy when Battery first expanded into software buyout deals nearly 25 years ago, building on our venture-capital heritage. But it’s an approach we increasingly see other firms adopt these days as they also search for value in all corners of the market.

Our AI strategy

While we’ve been investing in AI companies for the last few years, both at the infrastructure and software-application layer, we now see AI impacting almost every business we speak with. Companies in every sector, from manufacturing to retail to legal to healthcare, are now leveraging AI to become more productive and offer vastly smarter products and services. AI is no longer a category—it’s a baseline baked into virtually every technology product being developed today. In our view, it also signals the onset of one of the most consequential eras in the history of tech.

On the tech-infrastructure side, where our AI investments can ultimately support new applications, we’re excited about new AI coding tools, databases, cybersecurity companies and others. Throughout our practice, our goal is to focus on great founders and management teams, compelling markets and technologies that can create tangible value—not just market hype.

This February alone, we announced investments in an AI-powered, freight logistics company; a company making AI tools for wealth managers; and a business using AI to analyze “tabular” data inside core business software like ERP and CRM systems.

We’re also excited about leveraging our AI expertise to help bootstrapped, often family-run tech businesses adopt this groundbreaking new technology to modernize and grow. We see opportunity here across software as well as in industrial technology and life-science tools businesses in the U.S., Europe and Israel. In industrial/tech life sciences, specifically, we believe AI will play a big role in advancing sensor technologies, industrial automation and analytical instrumentation, all areas in which we’re currently investing.

Software and AI—working together

And speaking of software: There’s obviously been plenty of talk lately about AI negatively impacting software as a market category, a sector in which we’ve invested for more than four decades. The recent gyrations in the stock market reflect that. But we’re taking a long view and believe that the AI transformation will take many years to play out. Some, alongside new upstarts, as long as they can demonstrate product leadership and be agile enough to adapt to new norms and buying patterns. And overall, we think AI means the total software/technology pie will grow, and demand by corporate and consumer buyers for new technology products, with AI baked in, will expand dramatically.

Major technology transitions are inherently disruptive. They’re not easy, and we’re ready for that. Overall, we remain extremely excited about AI and the broader opportunities in technology in the years and decades to come. We’re extremely excited to deploy Battery Ventures XV around the world.