Norwest Raises $4 Billion Fund, Its Largest Yet, to Expand Its AI Investing

The new fund is Norwest's 18th. It is a third larger than its previous fund, which closed at $3 billion in 2024. Wells Fargo is the firm's only backer. Since its 17th fund launched, Norwest has made more than 87 investments.

The size of the fund shows that large multi-stage firms can still raise more capital and are putting more of it into AI. Norwest invests at every stage from early rounds to growth deals. Its past investments include Plaid, Spotify, Uber and the apparel brand Vuori, and it plans to spread the new money across sectors and countries, mainly the United States, India and Israel.

The firm said it wants to back AI startups that build products and services for consumer, healthcare and technology markets. It also plans to keep investing in physical AI, voice AI, agentic cybersecurity and aerospace.

Jeff Crowe, a senior managing partner at Norwest, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the approach was broad on purpose. "We're taking a broad approach to AI because its impact is broad," he said, adding that "AI is not limited by industry, geography or application." Crowe compared the shift to the earlier wave of digital transformation, saying AI could reach most layers of enterprise, consumer and healthcare products, from networking to enterprise IT and applications.

Crowe said the firm is most interested in early-stage companies building AI-native applications and infrastructure, physical AI, domain-specific models and cybersecurity tools.

Recent deals follow that plan. Norwest has invested in Coval, which makes tools to test and evaluate AI agents, and in Generalist AI, which develops foundation models for robots.

Norwest has not said how much of the $4 billion is reserved for any single sector or region. According to Crowe's comments, the firm will target early-stage companies building AI-native products and models for specific industries.