Source : TechCrunch (AI-generated image)
MENLO PARK, California, November 4, 2026 – Sequoia Capital is closing its London office, shutting down its Arc accelerator and Scouts programme and merging its early-stage and growth teams, in a reshaping that pulls the venture capital firm back towards a smaller, Bay Area-centred operation, as reported by TechCrunch.
The changes were set out in a memo titled “The Sequoia of Tomorrow” that the firm posted on X on Wednesday morning. In it, Sequoia said it had raised about US$10 billion in new funds, flattened its partnership and ended its weekly Monday partner meeting.
The firm said it is coming out of a roughly 20-year expansionary phase in which it built multiple businesses in multiple regions, and that one unintended side effect was hierarchy. “We are best at high-conviction, highly selective venture capital investing. This is our focus,” the memo said.
Scouts and Arc wound down
TechCrunch said one of the biggest surprises was the end of two programmes that kept Sequoia close to young founders. Scouts, launched around 2009, gave founders and operators small cheques to invest on the firm’s behalf. The report said the programme helped bring Uber and Stripe to Sequoia’s attention.
Arc, launched in March 2022, was a batch accelerator for pre-seed and seed founders, running several seven-week cohorts a year, with admitted companies receiving between US$500,000 and US$1 million up front. Sequoia said it would now put “more energy behind fewer people and things”.
London office closes
The London office, opened in 2020, will close, and several people will leave the firm. “We simply don’t see the need for a local presence,” the memo said, adding that Europe will continue to produce “outlier founders” whom Sequoia can support from its base in the Bay Area.
Luciana Lixandru, Sequoia’s first partner in Europe, said on X that she had been offered a move to San Francisco and declined. “Europe is where my family is, and where I want to build,” she wrote. She said she remains a partner and will keep her board seats while investing personally in European founders. TechCrunch noted that the move follows Andreessen Horowitz closing its London office last year and Coatue closing its own in 2024.
Seven general partners and no Monday meeting
The memo says Sequoia now has seven general partners who own and operate the firm: co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, along with Andrew Reed, Shaun Maguire, Konstantine Buhler, Sonya Huang and David Cahn. It also says the firm has reunited with former Workday chief executive Carl Eschenbach, who returned as a full-time partner in March.
The firm said it will no longer run on a Monday partner meeting cycle. “Founders operate 24/7, and so do we,” it wrote.
Sequoia acknowledged that the changes come at a cost. “It is scary to break something that’s already working just fine, and it is painful to say goodbye to great people,” the memo said. TechCrunch noted that the firm has reshaped itself before, most notably in 2023, when it separated from its China and India and Southeast Asia arms, which became HongShan and Peak XV. The memo ended: “Excellence is a moving target, so we will always be changing. But for now, this is Sequoia.”
About The Author
