A side-by-side comparison of two AI investors: Kleiner Perkins (Power Score 81/100) and SoftBank Vision Fund (Power Score 82/100), both ranked among the most active firms tracked in this category.
| Kleiner Perkins | SoftBank Vision Fund | |
|---|---|---|
| Power Score™ | 81/100 | 82/100 |
| Assets Managed | $21B+ | $175B (platform assets, 2022) |
| Founded | 1972 | 2017 |
| Headquarters | Menlo Park, CA | London, UK |
| Sectors | Enterprise Software, Consumer Internet, Healthcare, AI, Deep Tech, Industrial Tech, Fintech | AI, Enterprise Software, Consumer Internet, Logistics, Cybersecurity, Climate, Developer Tools, Deep Tech |
Kleiner Perkins was founded in 1972 by Eugene Kleiner, a Fairchild Semiconductor co-founder, and Tom Perkins, a former Hewlett-Packard executive with degrees from MIT and Harvard. Joined shortly after by Frank Caufield and Brook Byers, the firm built its name on backing category-defining technology companies from their earliest days, including Genentech, Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Amazon, and Google. The firm's 1999 investment in Google alongside Sequoia Capital - writing what was then its largest check ever - remains one of the most celebrated bets in venture capital history.
View full Kleiner Perkins profile →SoftBank Vision Fund remains the clearest example of venture capital run at platform scale, having launched Vision Fund 1 at $100 billion in 2017. Its current messaging has become far more coherent than the early 'invest in everything transformed by AI' caricature: the firm is now organized around a full-stack AI ecosystem of hardware, infrastructure, and applications, with CEO Alex Clavel's leadership stressing discipline, monetization, and cash-runway quality across the portfolio. That shift matters because it shows the platform institutionalizing what was previously perceived as founder-led opportunism under Masayoshi Son, while still concentrating unusually large checks into category leaders - DoorDash's $71.2 billion IPO valuation stands as SVF1's best fully-exited outcome, with a $7.3 billion gain.
View full SoftBank Vision Fund profile →