Venture-capital fund Founders Fund raises $1 billion

Founders Fund is announcing this evening that it has raised $1 billion for its fifth fund, which will be led by partners Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Brian Singerman, Peter Thiel, Lauren Gross, Geoff Lewis, and Scott Nolan. Since 2005, Founders Fund has raised over $2 billion and invested in a number of sectors, including aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, energy, health, and consumer. The firm says that Fund V will have a similarly broad investment strategy.

Founders Fund, a backer of FacebookFB +4.03% and Space Exploration Technologies, has closed $1 billion in new financing for a fifth fund, the firm announced on Wednesday. The new vehicle is quite a step up from the $50 million the firm raised when it was founded in 2005 by Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, both former top executives at PayPal. In 2011, Founders Fund raised a fourth fund at $625 million, larger than its first three funds combined. Altogether, the San Francisco firm has collected more than $2 billion in those nine years. “We want to find companies across all sectors and stages that are passionate about developing technologies to address the world’s most critical problems,” Luke Nosek, a Founders Fund partner said in a statement.