Ex-Benchmark Investors Victor Lazarte and Kris Fredrickson Plan to Raise $800 Million AI Fund

Victor Lazarte and Kris Fredrickson are raising an $800 million AI fund called Diffusion less than a year after each left Benchmark to start separate vehicles. Lazarte left Benchmark in July 2025 after backing Mercor, Heygen and Applied Compute during his two-year tenure as a partner.

He raised $200 million for his own fund, VL, before pitching Diffusion to prospective limited partners, according to several investors who received the pitch.

Fredrickson began his investing career at Benchmark before moving to Coatue, where he backed Instacart, Chime and Scale AI. Forbes reported last July that he raised $175 million for his own fund, Verified, to target growth-stage AI startups such as legal platform Harvey and search engine Perplexity. The two did not overlap at Benchmark.

Their planned partnership is unusual because limited partners had previously committed to each investor individually rather than as a team. Lazarte led a $30 million round for AI training company Mercor in 2024 at a $250 million valuation. Just over a year later, Mercor raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation.

Fredrickson first invested in Harvey in December 2023; the company reached an $11 billion valuation in March 2026. The $800 million target ranks among the larger first-time venture raises of 2026. Andreessen Horowitz raised a $15 billion fund announced in January 2026, Thrive Capital raised a $10 billion fund in February 2026, and Sequoia Capital raised a $7 billion fund in April 2026.

Pitchbook data shows that 80 percent of the $60 billion in global venture capital raised in the first quarter of 2026 went to five funds, including those three. Lazarte and Fredrickson did not respond to requests for comment.