Our Series F Investment in Vercel: Building at the Speed of Ideas

Five years ago, we announced we led Vercel’s Series A. Spring 2020 was a different world, but even then, founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch’s vision was bold. He wanted the web to work the way we all feel like it should, but it so often falls short of. He told me that Vercel would do for the frontend what AWS had done for the backend, making it easier to build and deploy beautiful, secure, user-friendly applications. 

It’s a vision that felt urgent at the time, and prescient in retrospect. In the past five years, AI has changed the way developers work, how applications are built, and who gets to build them. Vercel has been essential to each of those changes. Their AI development agent v0 turns ideas into polished products with enterprise-grade guardrails. Their AI Cloud gives teams secure, scalable infrastructure for creating and deploying intelligent applications. And their open-source framework Next.js powers global brands like AT&T, Nike, and Walmart. 

Developers love Vercel because using its products feels like magic. That feeling comes directly from Guillermo. Ask Guillermo about his time growing up on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and he’ll tell you about the hours he spent playing around on the computer, using words like “joy” and “miracle” and “obsessed.” He went on to author two popular open-source projects before he could legally drink, and outline a vision for a better, faster, more thoughtful frontend in the now well-known, “7 Principles of Rich Web Applications.” The same ideas would eventually become Vercel. 

In the past year, Vercel has doubled its ARR and user base. It’s gone from PLG to trusted infrastructure for the world’s largest companies. Teams and enterprises like Brex, MercadoLibre, Upwork, and Zapier now comprise more than 50% of v0 revenue. A lot of open source companies stumble when they attempt to move upmarket, either alienating their community or failing to level up to the needs of more complex organizations. But Vercel has excelled through this transition. The Next.js community thrives, while Vercel has proven itself as the go-to partner for daring enterprises that also care deeply about reliability and safety.

With Vercel, any company can operate at the speed of its ideas. We’re co-leading Vercel’s Series F to deepen our support for the bold team delivering on this even bolder vision.