Ballistic Ventures, the San Francisco cybersecurity firm co-founded by former Kleiner Perkins partner Ted Schlein, is seeking to raise $490 million across two new funds. TechCrunch reported the plan after spotting regulatory filings this week, and Ballistic declined to comment. Neither fund had recorded any sales at the time of filing, so this is an intention to raise and not a closed round.
For founders building security products, the filing is a useful data point about where specialist capital is heading. For operators and engineers at security companies, it hints at which kinds of startups may be hiring and acquiring next. Here is what the filing shows, what the surrounding numbers say, and how a founder in the Bay Area can use the news without over-reading it.
What Ballistic Ventures filed to raise
According to TechCrunch, the firm filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $360 million for its third flagship fund, which would match the size of its 2024 fund. It also filed for $130 million for a separate vehicle called Ballistic Ventures Fund B. The report says Ballistic raised a $300 million debut fund in 2022 and another $360 million for its second flagship two years later, plus about $130 million for a vehicle called Fund A, citing PitchBook data.
The flagship fund targeting the same size as the last one is worth noticing. Specialist firms often stay deliberately small so that each check can still matter to the company receiving it, and a flat fund size suggests Ballistic is keeping that approach even as the category grows.
Why a cybersecurity fund is back in the news
The report ties the fundraising to the spread of AI, which has raised concerns about more sophisticated attacks and created openings for new security startups. It cites a JPMorgan Chase report, based on PitchBook data, saying U.S. cybersecurity startups raised $11.5 billion in 2025, the most since 2022. The same report says AI-enabled companies made up about 72% of U.S. cybersecurity venture deals through May this year, compared with 36% in 2019.
Microsoft has also been pointing in this direction. TechCrunch notes that the company's annual Digital Defense Report, released last month, warned that attackers are increasingly using AI for phishing, social engineering and malware development, which lets them work faster and at larger scale even as many of their underlying techniques stay the same. If you sell to security teams, that framing is likely to show up in your buyers' budget conversations.
What the firm's portfolio tells founders
Ballistic's founding team includes Schlein, former AT&T Cybersecurity president Barmak Meftah and Roger Thornton, who co-founded Fortify Software and AlienVault. TechCrunch says the firm has backed Talon Cyber Security, which Palo Alto Networks completed acquiring in December 2023, and Pangea, which CrowdStrike agreed to buy in September 2025 to extend its Falcon platform into AI security.
Both exits were acquisitions by large security vendors, and both were aimed at problems that were new when the startups were founded, namely secure browsing for unmanaged devices and protection for enterprise AI use. Current holdings named in the report include Armadin, GetReal, Nudge Security and Oligo Security. A founder reading this list should take away that specialist investors in this category have repeatedly funded narrow products that a platform vendor later wanted.
How founders can use this news
If you are building in security, the practical move is to learn how specialist firms evaluate companies before you pitch them. Read their portfolio pages, see which problems their past investments solved and ask founders in that portfolio how the relationship worked after the check cleared. Our guide to Sand Hill Road VCs for first-time founders covers how to approach firms in general, and the same research habits apply to a San Francisco specialist.
If you are not in security, the news still says something about how venture firms are organizing. Several recent stories show investors building funds around a single theme, including the a16z Frontier rebrand, and a founder who can describe their company in the language of one of those themes will find the first conversation easier. Employees at startups should also keep in mind that fund activity affects secondary sales, a topic we covered in our post on startup tender offers.
What to watch next
Because the funds have recorded no sales yet, the next signals will be an announced first close or a statement from the firm, and neither appeared in the coverage we reviewed. Until then, treat the $490 million figure as a target reported from filings. Founders who want to follow how cybersecurity startups raise money can also watch for new SEC filings, which are how this story surfaced.
It is also worth tracking how acquirers behave. Platform security vendors have shown they will pay for focused teams, and a larger specialist fund means more such teams could get funded. For anyone weighing a job at an early security startup, that is a reasonable thing to ask about in interviews.
Find your people
Funding news is easier to make sense of with other founders in the room. Tribe organizes South Bay Renaissance, a program that is rebuilding the South Bay and Peninsula startup and social scene one gathering at a time, with founder dinners, AI deep dives and demo nights. You can follow every upcoming event on the Tribe Events calendar on Luma, and you can swap links and questions about funding news in the AI Trends Tribe.
