Sequoia raises roughly $10 billion — and shuts down London, Arc and Scouts at the same time
On November 4, 2026, the venture capital firm Sequoia announced roughly $10 billion in new funds — alongside a sweeping retrenchment: the London office is closing, the Arc accelerator and the Scouts program are being wound down, and the firm is now to be owned and run by seven general partners.
Sequoia Capital posted a memo titled "The Sequoia of Tomorrow" on its official X account on November 4, 2026. Its contents are a paradox: the firm itself states — sources relay it as "roughly" — that it has raised about $10 billion in new funds. At the same time, it is pulling back on almost every other front. It is this combination of massive capital raising and equally massive downsizing that makes the announcement unusual. All of the memo's contents and quotations in this article are known through secondary sources StrictlyVC, TechCrunch via UA.NEWS, Shift Delete and Unite.AI — the document itself is not reproduced in full among the available sources. The $10 billion figure is thus Sequoia's own disclosure, passed along.
Everything that changes at once
The memo announces four major changes in addition to the funds: the London office is closing, the Arc accelerator is being discontinued, the Scouts program is being wound down, and the early-stage and growth teams are being merged into one. The partnership is being flattened, and the Monday partner meeting is abolished.
Sequoia's stated rationale for the reorganization is that the firm is emerging from a roughly 20-year expansionary phase in which it built multiple business lines across several geographies. An unwanted side effect, the firm writes according to StrictlyVC, was hierarchy. According to the same source, the message reflects a desire to concentrate energy on fewer people and fewer things.
The seven partners
Leadership is already narrower than many will remember it. According to the memo, there are now seven general partners who primarily own and run Sequoia: Alfred Lin and Pat Grady as the firm's so-called "co-stewards," plus Andrew Reed, Shaun Maguire, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang and David Cahn, who joined in 2023. Their stated focus areas are, according to Shift Delete, AI, space, biology and reindustrialization. The sources say nothing about how the roughly $10 billion is allocated among these areas.
Programs that are disappearing — and what they meant
The Scouts program has operated since roughly 2009. Founders and operators received small checks to invest on Sequoia's behalf, and through them the firm gained early access to young founders. TechCrunch highlights two particularly important examples: the introductions that gave Sequoia entry into Uber via Jason Calacanis, and into Stripe via Sam Altman. Shutting down this system therefore touches deal flow that has been among the firm's most important.
The Arc accelerator was launched in March 2022 as a pre-seed/seed-stage program. According to TechCrunch and StrictlyVC, it ran for seven weeks with between $500,000 and $1 million in startup capital. Unite.AI, however, reports an eight-week program and $1 million — a discrepancy that is not resolved in the available documentation and that readers should therefore carry with them as uncertainty.
The Europe dimension
Sequoia opened its London office in 2020 and the same year recruited Luciana Lixandru from Accel as the firm's first partner in Europe. After the closure, some employees will leave the firm, TechCrunch reports. The memo states that Sequoia no longer sees a need for a local presence in Europe, and that European founders will be supported from the Bay Area.
According to her own statements on X, relayed by StrictlyVC, Lixandru was offered the chance to relocate to San Francisco but declined. She remains a partner, keeps her board seats, and will invest personally in European founders — that is, outside the firm's formal structure.
The memo's own wording on London, as relayed by Shift Delete and translated from English: "This is not about the team – they are excellent. We simply don't see the need for a local presence." On the merger of the teams, according to the same source: "There is no more 'Early & Growth'. There is only Sequoia."
The retrenchment comes in a broader context. StrictlyVC points out that Andreessen Horowitz closed its London office last year, and that Coatue pulled out in 2024. Sequoia is thus not an isolated case but part of a pattern of top US funds retreating from Europe.
Open questions
Several key matters remain unresolved. The composition of the roughly $10 billion — which funds, which stages, whether the figure is aggregated — is not broken out in any of the sources. The scale of the layoffs in London is described only as "some employees," without numbers or names. What practical support for European founders from the Bay Area will actually involve is not specified. And it remains to be seen whether the merger of the teams actually flattens decision-making, or whether it concentrates power in fewer hands — seven general partners is still a small group, governed under two "co-stewards."