Founders Fund has backed companies across several generations of technology, from SpaceX, Palantir, Stripe, and Airbnb to newer businesses in AI, defense, fintech, manufacturing, and enterprise software. Its current portfolio includes OpenAI, Anduril, Cognition, Ramp, Rippling, Crusoe, Hadrian, Scale AI, Flock Safety, and BuildOps.
The firm's investment capacity has also continued expanding. In May 2026, Founders Fund reportedly closed a $6 billion growth fund, its largest fundraise to date, following a $4.6 billion growth vehicle closed the previous year.
Artificial intelligence is a particularly important part of the broader funding environment. An OECD analysis of AI investment found that AI companies accounted for approximately 61% of global venture-capital investment value in 2025. At the same time, Founders Fund's portfolio shows that significant private-company growth is also occurring in defense manufacturing, financial operations, workforce software, public safety, and commercial-trades technology.
Fast-growing private companies can show momentum through revenue, ARR, customer adoption, product usage, financing, hiring, and valuation growth. These ten Founders Fund-backed companies demonstrate recent expansion across one or more of those measures.
Key Takeaways
- OpenAI, Anduril, Cognition, and Ramp completed major 2026 financings alongside significant operating growth
- Hadrian and Anduril show how venture-backed technology is moving deeper into defense manufacturing and physical infrastructure
- Scale AI and Crusoe are expanding around different parts of the AI infrastructure stack
- Flock Safety and BuildOps combine software with industries that depend heavily on physical operations
- Funding provides more useful market context when considered alongside revenue, customers, hiring, product adoption, and organizational expansion
1) OpenAI
Industry: Artificial Intelligence
Founded: 2015
CEO and Co-Founder: Sam Altman
Latest Funding: $122 billion in committed capital, March 2026
Post-Money Valuation: $852 billion
OpenAI develops frontier AI models and products including ChatGPT, Codex, APIs, and enterprise AI services. Founders Fund includes OpenAI in its current investment portfolio.
Recent Growth
OpenAI closed its latest financing in March 2026 with $122 billion in committed capital at an $852 billion post-money valuation.
Product adoption has also continued expanding across consumer, developer, and enterprise use cases. Earlier in 2026, OpenAI reported that weekly Codex users had more than tripled since the start of the year to approximately 1.6 million.
The company continues investing heavily in compute capacity, model development, enterprise products, and developer infrastructure.
Industry Importance
OpenAI operates across several parts of the AI market simultaneously. Its models power consumer applications, enterprise workflows, developer products, and third-party software built through its APIs.
The expansion of Codex also places the company directly within the shift toward AI agents capable of completing larger portions of software-development work.
2) Anduril
Industry: Defense Technology / Autonomous Systems
Founded: 2017
CEO: Brian Schimpf
Founder: Palmer Luckey
Latest Funding: $5 billion Series H, May 2026
Valuation: $61 billion
Anduril develops autonomous aircraft, underwater systems, drones, sensors, command-and-control software, weapons systems, and other technology for defense and national-security organizations.
Founders Fund backed Anduril from its early development, and Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens is one of the company's co-founders and executive chairman.
Recent Growth
Anduril raised $5 billion in May 2026 at a $61 billion valuation, roughly double the $30.5 billion valuation attached to its previous financing.
The company reported that revenue more than doubled during 2025 to $2.2 billion while its workforce nearly doubled.
Its operational footprint has also continued expanding through new manufacturing facilities, autonomous systems programs, rocket-motor production, and contracts involving the U.S. military and allied governments.
Industry Importance
Anduril represents the growing role of venture-backed companies in defense markets traditionally dominated by large incumbent contractors.
Its model combines software, autonomy, hardware development, manufacturing, and direct participation in major defense programs, making its growth materially different from that of a conventional software company.
3) Cognition
Industry: AI Software Engineering
Founded: 2024
CEO and Co-Founder: Scott Wu
Latest Funding: More than $2 billion Series E, September 2026
Valuation: $48 billion
Cognition develops Devin, an autonomous software-engineering agent designed to plan and execute larger development tasks. The company also operates Windsurf following its acquisition of the remaining Windsurf business in 2025.
Founders Fund was an early Cognition investor and participated again in its September 2026 financing.
Recent Growth
Cognition raised more than $2 billion in Series E financing in September 2026 at a $48 billion valuation.
Only four months earlier, the company had raised approximately $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation.
Operating growth has moved alongside the valuation increase. Cognition reported that its run-rate revenue increased from $492 million in May to almost $900 million by September.
Industry Importance
Cognition is part of the transition from AI code completion toward software agents that can plan, write, test, debug, and deploy code.
That development changes the role of AI within engineering organizations from assisting with individual coding tasks toward participating in broader development processes.
4) Ramp
Industry: Financial Operations / Fintech
Founded: 2019
CEO and Co-Founder: Eric Glyman
Latest Funding: $750 million, June 2026
Valuation: $44 billion
Ramp provides corporate cards, expense management, accounts payable, procurement, travel, accounting automation, and other financial-operations software.
Founders Fund was an early investor in Ramp and continues to list the company in its portfolio.
Recent Growth
Ramp raised $750 million in June 2026 at a $44 billion valuation.
The company reported more than $1 billion in annualized revenue, continuing a period of substantial expansion across corporate spending and financial-management products.
Ramp has also been investing more heavily in AI-assisted financial operations, including software designed to automate expense review, procurement processes, accounting tasks, and other workflows.
Industry Importance
Ramp has expanded beyond corporate cards into a broader financial-operations platform.
Its growth reflects demand for software that connects spending, procurement, accounts payable, travel, accounting, and financial controls rather than treating those functions as isolated processes.
5) Scale AI
Industry: AI Data, Evaluations, and Applications
Founded: 2016
CEO: Francis deSouza
Founder and Chairman: Alexandr Wang
Latest Major Investment: Meta strategic investment, June 2025
Valuation Following Transaction: More than $29 billion
Scale AI provides data infrastructure, model evaluations, and AI applications for model developers, enterprises, and governments. Founders Fund has invested in Scale across its growth.
Recent Growth
Scale described 2025 as its strongest financial year, with well over $1 billion in new business.
Nearly half of new bookings arrived during the fourth quarter, while its applications business more than doubled revenue during the second half of the year. Scale's international public-sector business also doubled revenue across 2025.
The company appointed Francis deSouza CEO effective August 10, 2026. Alexandr Wang remains Scale's founder and chairman.
Industry Importance
Scale has expanded from its original training-data business into model evaluations, enterprise AI applications, public-sector deployments, robotics data, and other infrastructure.
Its development illustrates how the AI infrastructure market now extends beyond collecting training data into evaluating and deploying AI systems in production environments.
6) Rippling
Industry: Workforce Management / Enterprise Software
Founded: 2016
CEO and Founder: Parker Conrad
Latest Funding: $450 million Series G, May 2025
Valuation: $16.8 billion
Rippling provides software spanning HR, payroll, benefits, IT, identity, device management, corporate spending, and other workforce processes.
Founders Fund has backed Rippling across multiple stages of its development.
Recent Growth
Rippling raised $450 million in new financing in May 2025 at a $16.8 billion valuation. The financing was accompanied by agreements to repurchase up to $200 million in equity from current and former employees.
At the time, Rippling reported more than 20,000 customers. The company's more recent materials indicate that more than 30,000 organizations now use its products.
Rippling has continued broadening its platform across HR, IT, identity, payroll, benefits, and spend management.
Industry Importance
Rippling is built around the idea that many business applications rely on the same underlying employee information.
Connecting those functions through a shared employee-data layer allows the company to expand across several enterprise-software categories while maintaining a common data foundation.
7) Hadrian
Industry: Advanced Manufacturing / Defense
Founded: 2020
CEO and Founder: Chris Power
Latest Funding: $1.37 billion Series D, August 2026
Valuation: Approximately $7.9 billion
Hadrian develops automated manufacturing facilities for aerospace and defense components. Its factories combine skilled labor, robotics, software, automation, and AI-assisted production systems.
Founders Fund has backed Hadrian across multiple financing rounds.
Recent Growth
Hadrian raised $1.37 billion in Series D financing in August 2026 at a valuation of approximately $7.9 billion.
The financing followed a $260 million Series C roughly a year earlier, bringing total capital raised to approximately $2 billion.
Hadrian has also continued opening manufacturing capacity, including a facility in Alabama focused on producing components for submarine programs.
Industry Importance
Defense manufacturing depends on specialized suppliers capable of producing precision components at sufficient volume and speed.
Hadrian applies automation and software to that manufacturing layer, placing venture-backed technology directly within the industrial supply chain supporting aerospace and defense programs.
8) Crusoe
Industry: AI Infrastructure / Data Centers
Founded: 2018
CEO and Co-Founder: Chase Lochmiller
Latest Completed Funding: $1.375 billion Series E, October 2025
Valuation: More than $10 billion
Crusoe develops large-scale AI computing infrastructure, data centers, and cloud services. Founders Fund is an investor in the company.
Recent Growth
Crusoe announced the initial closing of a $1.375 billion Series E in October 2025 at a valuation above $10 billion.
The company has expanded from its earlier focus on computing powered by otherwise stranded energy into large-scale AI data-center development and cloud infrastructure.
Its customer relationships have included major technology companies seeking additional computing capacity for AI workloads.
Industry Importance
The expansion of frontier AI models and enterprise AI applications requires large amounts of computing infrastructure, power, cooling, networking, and physical construction.
Crusoe operates at that infrastructure layer, where AI growth increasingly depends on the ability to secure and deploy both computing hardware and energy at substantial scale.
9) Flock Safety
Industry: Public-Safety Technology
Founded: 2017
CEO and Founder: Garrett Langley
Latest Funding: $500 million, April 2026
Valuation: Approximately $8.3 billion
Flock Safety develops license-plate readers, video cameras, drones, gunshot-detection systems, and software used by law-enforcement agencies, businesses, neighborhoods, and other organizations.
Founders Fund is among the company's investors.
Recent Growth
Flock Safety raised approximately $500 million in April 2026 at a valuation of about $8.3 billion.
During the first half of 2026, the company crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue after reporting more than $300 million ARR and 70% year-over-year growth in 2025.
Flock has also expanded beyond its original license-plate-reader product into drones, video, audio detection, and AI-assisted search and investigation software.
Industry Importance
Flock illustrates how software subscriptions, connected hardware, manufacturing, and data infrastructure can combine within public-safety technology.
Its expanding footprint has also increased attention around privacy, data governance, access controls, retention policies, and oversight as connected surveillance technology becomes more widely deployed.
10) BuildOps
Industry: Vertical SaaS / Commercial Contractors
Founded: 2018
CEO and Co-Founder: Alok Chanani
Latest Funding: $127 million Series C, March 2025
Valuation: $1 billion
BuildOps provides software for commercial specialty contractors across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, refrigeration, fire protection, and other trades.
Its platform combines service management, project management, scheduling, dispatch, financial operations, and AI-assisted workflows. Founders Fund is among its institutional investors.
Recent Growth
BuildOps reached a $1 billion valuation after raising $127 million in Series C financing in 2025.
The company ranked No. 336 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 after posting 1,012% revenue growth over three years. Its software now serves more than 1,500 commercial specialty contractors across North America.
BuildOps has also expanded geographically and continued adding AI capabilities across contractor operations.
Industry Importance
Commercial specialty contractors support physical infrastructure including hospitals, airports, industrial facilities, offices, and data centers.
BuildOps demonstrates how vertical software and AI can expand into operational industries that have historically relied on fragmented or manual systems. Its 2026 Inc. 5000 ranking provides an additional measure of its recent multi-year revenue growth.
What the Growth Across Founders Fund Companies Shows
The companies above operate in very different industries, but several broader patterns connect their recent expansion.
AI Growth Extends Beyond Model Developers
OpenAI operates close to the model and platform layer, while Cognition focuses on software-development agents and Scale AI provides data, evaluation, and application infrastructure.
Crusoe sits further down the stack in computing and data-center infrastructure, showing how AI growth can create demand across several interconnected markets.
Defense Technology Is Becoming More Capital Intensive
Anduril and Hadrian combine technology development with manufacturing capacity.
Scaling those businesses requires factories, supply chains, specialized engineering, hardware production, testing facilities, and long-term government relationships in addition to software development.
Operational Software Continues to Expand
Ramp, Rippling, and BuildOps apply software to financial operations, workforce management, and commercial contracting.
Their growth reflects continued demand for systems that consolidate workflows and operational data rather than requiring teams to manage each process independently.
Growth Creates Different Types of Business Change
A financing round can support product development, hiring, manufacturing, infrastructure, international expansion, or acquisitions.
For GTM teams, combining the funding event with other changes—such as department growth, executive appointments, customer expansion, or technology adoption—can provide a more complete account picture than the financing announcement alone.
Using Landbase to Track Founders Fund Companies as They Scale
Companies such as Anduril, Hadrian, Crusoe, Ramp, and Cognition can change quickly after major financing events. New facilities, expanding departments, leadership changes, and product launches can all reshape which teams and decision-makers are relevant to a GTM strategy.
Landbase can help teams follow those changes without treating every newly funded company as the same type of opportunity.
Follow Companies After Major Funding Events
Landbase's recent funding data can help identify companies entering a new financing stage. Teams can then add signals such as headcount growth to see where expansion is occurring across functions or geographies.
For companies scaling quickly, useful changes may include:
- Engineering or manufacturing hiring
- New sales and operations teams
- Geographic expansion
- Executive appointments
- Technology changes
This adds operating context around the financing event itself.
Research Complex Accounts More Deeply
The companies in the Founders Fund portfolio often span several business functions. A defense manufacturer, AI infrastructure provider, and fintech company are unlikely to share the same relevant buyer.
Landbase's account research workflow can add company, technology, signal, and contact context, while its decision-maker research can help identify stakeholders based on the specific business problem being addressed.
Keep High-Growth Accounts Current
Fast-growing private companies can change significantly between funding rounds. Landbase's always-on lists can keep a defined account set updated as companies begin matching new funding, hiring, technology, or other criteria.
That can turn a one-time Founders Fund portfolio analysis into an evolving account watchlist.
Bring the Research Into Technical Workflows
For GTM engineers and RevOps operators, the Landbase CLI can bring company research, matching, enrichment, and dataset operations into Claude Code, Codex, scripts, and other technical environments.
This makes it possible to revisit the same Founders Fund company set as new rounds, hiring changes, and other developments emerge.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a Founders Fund-backed company fast-growing?
Growth can appear through revenue or ARR expansion, customer adoption, product usage, financing, valuation increases, hiring, or geographic expansion. Because private companies disclose different metrics, several indicators can provide a more useful view of momentum than valuation alone.
What industries does Founders Fund invest in?
Founders Fund invests across multiple sectors and company stages. Its current portfolio includes businesses in artificial intelligence, aerospace, defense, fintech, enterprise software, biotechnology, energy, manufacturing, consumer technology, and other markets.
Why are defense and AI prominent among current Founders Fund companies?
Both sectors are attracting substantial capital because they involve large technical and infrastructure requirements. AI growth requires models, computing, data, applications, and energy infrastructure, while modern defense programs increasingly depend on autonomy, software, advanced manufacturing, sensors, and robotics.
What signals can help identify a venture-backed company that is scaling?
Useful signals include funding, revenue growth, department-level headcount expansion, hiring activity, executive appointments, customer growth, product launches, technology changes, manufacturing expansion, and new geographic markets. Combining several signals can provide a fuller picture of how the company is changing.
How can Landbase help GTM teams research Founders Fund-backed companies?
Landbase can help teams define relevant company sets, compare growth characteristics, analyze patterns across accounts, add company and contact data, and build reusable datasets. Those workflows can also move into the Landbase CLI for repeatable research inside Claude Code, Codex, scripts, and other technical GTM environments.
.png)
.png)
