8VC was founded in 2015 by Joe Lonsdale, Jake Medwell, Drew Oetting, Alex Kolicich, and Kimmy Scotti, emerging from the breakup of Formation 8, a prior venture firm Lonsdale had co-founded. Lonsdale's own operating history - co-founding Palantir Technologies and Addepar before ever becoming a full-time investor - shapes the firm's entire model: rather than purely writing checks, 8VC actively builds companies from scratch through its dedicated 8VC Build program, leveraging genuine firsthand experience scaling category-defining technology platforms. The firm relocated from San Francisco to Austin in 2020, positioning itself at the center of an entire wave of technology companies making the same move, and focuses on ambitious, long-term opportunities in defense, healthcare, logistics, and enterprise software that most momentum-driven investors overlook. 8VC now manages $6 billion in committed capital, with a portfolio including Palantir, Oscar Health, Wish, Blend, and Joby Aviation.
Wish's NASDAQ IPO in December 2020 at a $14.1 billion valuation - Joe Lonsdale was an early institutional investor in the e-commerce company