Norwest pushes deeper into AI with new $4B fund

Norwest, a firm backed solely by Wells Fargo, has raised a $4 billion fund as it sets out to invest more in AI. This is the eighteenth fund for the 65-year-old multi-stage investment firm, and its largest to date.

The fund will be invested across various sectors and multiple counties, notably the United States, India, and Israel. But the big story here is AI, and Norwest’s plans to expand its investment in this area.

Norwest said Thursday it aims to capitalize on AI startups developing products and services across core industries such as consumer, healthcare and technology. The investment firm, which has backed Plaid, Spotify, Uber and Vuori, said it will continue to expand its investments in physical AI, voice AI, agentic cybersecurity, and aerospace.

If that sounds like a broad approach, it is intended to be, Jeff Crowe, a senior managing partner at Norwest, told TechCrunch.

“We’re taking a broad approach to AI because its impact is broad,” CroweAI is not limited by industry, geography or application. Just as digital transformation did, AI transformation has the potential to touch most layers of enterprise, consumer and healthcare solutions: networking, enterprise IT and applications. Adapting to an agentic environment means applying AI broadly across products and services that solve problems.”

Crowe added that the firm is particularly excited about early-stage companies building AI-native application and infrastructure, physical AI, domain-specific models, and cybersecurity solutions.

Some of the firm’s recent investments reflect this strategy. For instance, the firm invested in Coval, which builds tools to test and evaluate AI agents, and Generalist AI, a startup that has developed AI foundations models for robots.

Since the launch of its 17th fund, a $3 billion raise that closed in 2024, the firm has made more than 87 investments.

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Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.

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