While many top-tier venture firms continue to raise massively larger funds, Greylock Ventures, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most prestigious venture firms, is intentionally bucking the trend of increasing fund size.

On Tuesday, the 61-year-old company announced it had raised an 18th fund of $1.5 billion. The figure is 50% higher than its previous $1 billion 2023 vehicle and roughly matches the capital the company raised through seed and flagship funds during the pandemic. Still, Greylock partner Saam Motamedi told TechCrunch that Greylock could have easily raised a “multiple” of that figure, suggesting the association decided moderation was the best path at a time when the size of funds across the industry continues to rise.

“Our mission is to be the most important partner for the most important entrepreneurs,” Motamedi said. The company prides itself on introducing its portfolio companies to top engineers and potential clients, as it did with Baseten, an AI infrastructure startup that is now valued at $13 billion, after first investing in its Series A in 2022. But Motamedi said Greylock can offer that level of support only by keeping the number of companies it backs small.

The firm’s 10 partners make only one or two new investments each year, a pace that Motamedi says will result in approximately 25 portfolio companies from this fund.

Like its predecessors, the new fund will primarily focus on incubating companies from the early stages and leading seed and Series A rounds. This is where Greylock has built its reputation; The company has a strong track record of building companies from the ground up, notably security giant Palo Alto Networks, which launched inside Greylock’s offices 21 years ago, and email security startup Abnormal, which Greylock incubated in 2018 and was last valued at $5.1 billion.

Still, Greylock doesn’t stick strictly to early-stage deals. It will also support high-potential companies at later stages, even if it “missed them from the beginning,” Motamedi said. The firm’s 17th fund included three of these growth-stage bets: Anthropic, Revolut and Wiz.

The company made its first investment in Anthropic when the artificial intelligence company raised its Series F to a valuation of $183 billion. “It is the largest investment in the company’s history,” Motamedi said.

Motamedi estimates that about 15% of the new fund will go to later-stage startups, but maintains that Greylock remains primarily an early-stage investor.

As evidence, Motamedi said that when the partners meet every Monday to review their investment portfolio, the agenda consists mainly of names of people and not companies.

“We’re getting to know people before they even start a company. It’s really a bet on the person,” he said. “Often the company doesn’t even exist.”