Analysis
Sequoia Capital told its limited partners on November 4 that it is reversing roughly 20 years of geographic and program expansion, closing its London office, shutting its three-year-old Arc accelerator, and ending its scout-check program -- all in a memo titled "The Sequoia of Tomorrow" that the firm posted to X.
What Sequoia is undoing
The firm is closing the London office it opened in 2020 to anchor a standalone European presence, telling staff "we simply don't see the need for a local presence" and that it will support European founders from the Bay Area instead. Several people will leave as a result. Luciana Lixandru, Sequoia's first European partner, was offered a move to San Francisco, declined it, and remains a partner -- one of the few public details on how individual staff are affected.
Arc, launched in March 2022 as Sequoia's answer to Y Combinator -- a batch accelerator for pre-seed and seed founders -- is shutting down entirely. So is Scouts, the program Sequoia started around 2009 that handed small checks to founders and operators to invest on the firm's behalf. Sequoia is also merging its "Early" and "Growth" investing teams into one unit and ending its long-running Monday partner meeting, moves the firm frames as flattening a partnership that grew more hierarchical as it expanded.
“So is Scouts, the program Sequoia started around 2009 that handed small checks to founders and operators to invest on the firm's behalf.”
Who runs Sequoia now
Seven general partners now run the firm day to day: co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, plus Andrew Reed, Shaun Maguire, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang and David Cahn. Carl Eschenbach, the former Workday CEO, returned as a full-time partner in March. Jess Lee now carries the title chief product officer rather than investor. The reorg follows real turnover at the top: Stephanie Zhan left this year to launch her own firm, and Roelof Botha -- voted out as senior steward last fall -- cut formal ties with Sequoia this summer, around the time he joined SpaceX's board. Doug Leone, Jim Goetz and Botha are named in the memo as the stewards of the expansion era now ending.
How we got here
Sequoia's 20-year build-out wasn't limited to London, Arc and Scouts. In 2023 the firm split off its China and India/Southeast Asia investing arms entirely, which now operate independently as HongShan and Peak XV. The firm says it has raised roughly $10 billion in new funds this year even as it unwinds these programs -- a reminder that the retrenchment is about structure and geography, not about Sequoia's ability to raise capital. Scale at Sequoia, by the numbers, per the firm and Wikipedia:
- 2026 new funds raised -- roughly $10 billion, even as the firm shutters Arc, Scouts and the London office.
- Peak fund size, early 2023 -- the Sequoia Capital Fund reportedly reached $13.6 billion at the height of its multi-fund structure.
- Assets under management, Jan 2025 -- about $56 billion firmwide.
Sequoia's wider portfolio activity continues even as the firm restructures its own house, tracked on Pulse's Sequoia Capital page.
What it means for founders
For European founders, the message is blunt: Sequoia's commitment is now a Bay Area partner on a plane, not a local office -- a model closer to how the firm operated before 2020. For scouts and Arc alumni, the end of both programs closes off two of the lowest-friction ways non-partners got access to Sequoia's capital and brand. And for rival accelerators and scout networks -- Y Combinator chief among them for Arc, and a long tail of super-angel and scout programs at other firms -- Sequoia's retreat removes a well-funded competitor just as seed-stage competition for the best AI-era founders has intensified.
The risk in Sequoia's own framing is that flattening a large, multi-program platform back toward a seven-partner core assumes those seven can still cover the ground a dedicated London office, an accelerator and a scout network used to cover. Sequoia's memo acknowledges as much: "It is scary to break something that's already working just fine."