Canaan Partners

Canaan Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1987, currently deploying its 13th flagship fund (Canaan XIII, $650M, closed April 2023). The firm maintains a deliberate 60/40 split between technology and healthcare investments. On the technology side, focus areas include enterprise/cloud, consumer, fintech, and frontier tech; on the healthcare side, the firm targets biopharma (oncology, immunology, neurology), digital health, and medtech, with a notable willingness to co-found and incubate companies from scratch. Canaan invests primarily at seed and Series A, with average check sizes of $15–20M per company. With $6.8 billion in total AUM across 13 funds, the firm has recorded 73 IPOs and 152 M&A exits to date. Canaan does not publish a public application portal; founders typically engage the firm through direct outreach or referral.