Analysis
Ballistic Ventures, the cybersecurity-focused venture firm co-founded by former Kleiner Perkins partner Ted Schlein, is seeking $490 million across two new funds, TechCrunch reported on November 3, 2026, based on regulatory filings.
The San Francisco firm is targeting $360 million for its third flagship fund -- the same size as its previous flagship vehicle -- and a separate $130 million for what it is calling Ballistic Ventures Fund B. Neither filing showed any sales recorded as of the article's publication, and Ballistic declined to comment on its fundraising plans.
What Ballistic Ventures does
Founded in late 2021, Ballistic exclusively funds and incubates cybersecurity entrepreneurs, according to SecurityWeek's coverage of the firm's prior fund close. Its founding partners are Kevin Mandia, who founded incident-response firm Mandiant before its sale to Google Cloud; Barmak Meftah, a former president of AT&T Cybersecurity; Ted Schlein, who spent more than two decades at Kleiner Perkins; Jake Seid; and Roger Thornton, who co-founded Fortify Software and AlienVault. That mix of operator and investor pedigree is central to the firm's pitch: Mandia's name alone carries weight with enterprise security buyers that a generalist VC lacks.
“Ballistic closed its debut fund at $300 million in 2022, the year after founding.”
Ballistic Ventures fund history
Ballistic closed its debut fund at $300 million in 2022, the year after founding. It followed with an oversubscribed $360 million second flagship fund, which SecurityWeek reported closing on March 14, 2024.
The new third flagship fund now in the market matches that 2024 vehicle in size exactly, while the separate Fund B appears to be a new type of vehicle for the firm -- its first reported fund split into two simultaneous raises rather than one.
Who is backing Ballistic Ventures
- Limited partners -- not named in any source opened for this story; Ballistic has not disclosed its LP base for either the new funds or its prior two vehicles.
- Founding partners as operator-investors -- Kevin Mandia, Barmak Meftah, Ted Schlein, Jake Seid and Roger Thornton effectively co-invest their reputations alongside LP capital, a structure the firm leans on to source deals other cybersecurity VCs cannot.
Cybersecurity VC market and competitors
US cybersecurity startups raised $11.5 billion in 2025, the highest total since 2022, according to a JPMorgan Chase report citing PitchBook data, cited by TechCrunch. AI-enabled companies made up about 72% of US cybersecurity VC deals through May 2026, up sharply from 36% in 2019 -- a shift that is pushing Ballistic and its peers toward backing AI-native security tooling rather than traditional perimeter defense. TechCrunch named two firms pursuing a similar strategy:
- Forgepoint Capital -- closed a $450 million second fund in February 2020, per its own announcement, roughly 25% larger than Ballistic's new flagship target.
- Ten Eleven Ventures -- named by TechCrunch as a comparable cybersecurity-focused investor; fund size not disclosed in current reporting.
Ballistic's own track record includes two notable exits: Talon Cyber Security, acquired by Palo Alto Networks, and Pangea, acquired by CrowdStrike -- the same CrowdStrike that this week separately agreed to buy two other AI security startups for close to $500 million combined, a sign of how consolidation-hungry the category has become.
What a flat fund size next to a record VC year for the category misses is that Ballistic could simply be choosing discipline over scale, a strategy that reads differently depending on whether LPs see it as prudence or as a firm failing to capture its moment.
What to watch next
Watch for the SEC filing to update with an actual close date and size, and for whether Ballistic names a dedicated AI-security thesis for Fund B given how much of the category's deal flow has shifted toward AI-native tools in the past 18 months.