Pear VC closes $333M Fund V, about $100M smaller than its predecessor, and promotes three general partners

TLDR

• Pear VC closed its fifth fund at $333 million, down from $432 million in May 2023.¹²
• By sizing down, Pear is betting that early access to founders matters more than bigger cheques.¹²
• Most of the fund goes into new pre-seed and seed investments over roughly two and a half years.²⁴

Pear VC, the Silicon Valley seed investor founded in 2013 by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson, announced on 14 October that it has closed a $333 million Fund V, bringing its assets under management to more than $1.1 billion.¹ That is about 23% below the $432 million the firm raised in May 2023, and the firm says the size fits what it does.² The Wall Street Journal reported that Pear originally considered a raise of up to $450 million and turned away some interested investors, naming Mizuho, Duke University and StepStone Group among its limited partners.³

Most of the fund is earmarked for new pre-seed and seed cheques over roughly two and a half years, with reserves for follow-on rounds in companies that break out.²⁴ The Journal reported that pace is faster than the three and a half to four years Pear historically took to make its initial investments, and that it expects PearX accelerator batches to grow to as many as 25 companies.³ Pear says PearX runs twice a year, accepts fewer than 1% of applicants, drew more than 6,000 applications for its Summer 2026 cohort, and that roughly 80% of its companies go on to raise institutional seed rounds.⁴ "We'll invest in more companies early and own more," Nozad told the Journal.³

Pear also promoted three investors who built companies before investing. Afrakhteh, who joined in 2020 and covers enterprise, AI and machine learning, cloud and data infrastructure, co-founded Cariden Technologies, acquired by Cisco in 2012. Kamat, who joined in 2015 and covers consumer, fintech and healthcare, co-founded Wedding Party, acquired by Instacart. Reddy, who joined in 2024 and covers AI infrastructure, robotics and vertical AI, co-founded Pixelapse, acquired by Dropbox, and led engineering teams at Stripe.¹

The close lands as capital concentrates in the largest vehicles. The National Venture Capital Association, using PitchBook data, reported that US firms raised $67 billion across 585 funds in 2025, with the 10 largest taking $22 billion, or 32.9%, up from 13% in 2021.² Pear points to a portfolio that includes DoorDash, Gusto, Vanta and Guardant Health, plus recent news from Listen Labs, which agreed to be acquired by Salesforce, and Forus, which raised a $150 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation.²¹ Hershenson's argument is that "capital is becoming commoditised" while access is not.²

Why it matters: by sizing its own fund down, Pear is betting that being first to the earliest-stage founders counts for more than writing bigger cheques, and the follow-on rounds of $150 million and above that its best companies now raise will test how much of those breakouts it can hold on to.