Disruptive announces $10 billion first blind-pool fund

Dallas-based Disruptive announced a $10 billion fund Tuesday, its first blind-pool vehicle, to back at least 10 late-stage companies with checks of up to $1 billion. The firm is aiming the money at AI and defense, two capital-intensive fields.

The Wall Street Journal first reported earlier this month that the firm was seeking the fund and had by then secured at least $7.5 billion in capital commitments. The Dallas Business Journal reported the new vehicle is the largest venture fund raised in Texas history, and TechCrunch described it as one of the biggest fundraises of the year so far.

For allocators, the shift from deal-by-deal special purpose vehicles to a blind pool moves the diligence question from a named company to the firm's pipeline. In the SPV model an investor saw the target before committing; here capital is committed against a mandate of at least 10 companies in AI and defense, with a $1 billion ceiling on any single check, or up to a tenth of the fund. Judging pacing, sector concentration and how capital gets called now happens before any portfolio company is named.

Disruptive's past bets include Palantir, Airbnb, Spotify, the chip startup Groq and the AI voice-generation company ElevenLabs. The firm was founded in 2012 by Alex Davis, grandson of billionaire oil magnate Marvin Davis. The arithmetic of the mandate is tight: 10 companies at up to $1 billion each is the full $10 billion.