Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs[1] in over 900 ventures,[2][3] including America Online,[4] Amazon.com,[5] Tandem Computers, Compaq,[6] Electronic Arts,[4] JD.com, Square,[7] Genentech,[6] Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Nest, Palo Alto Networks, Synack, Snap, AppDynamics, and Twitter.

[3] Kleiner Perkins is headquartered in Menlo Park in Silicon Valley,[9] with offices in San Francisco[9] and Shanghai, China.

[14][15] The firm is named after its four founding partners: Eugene Kleiner, Tom Perkins, Frank J. Caufield, and Brook Byers.

Venture capital firms suffered a temporary downturn in 1974, when the stock market crashed and investors were naturally wary of this new kind of investment fund.

[18] Beyond the original founders, notable members of the firm have included individuals such as[20] John Doerr,[21] Vinod Khosla,[22] and Bill Joy.

[26] Mary Meeker joined the firm in 2010,[20] and that year Kleiner Perkins expanded its practice to invest in growth stage companies.

[15][42] In October 2010, the firm launched a $250 million fund called sFund to focus on social startups, with co-investors such as Facebook, Zynga and Amazon.com.

[44] The firm has been an early investor in more than 900[2] technology and life sciences firms since its founding,[45] including Amazon.com,[5] America Online,[4] Applied Intuition,[46] Beyond Meat, Citrix,[47] Compaq,[6] Electronic Arts,[4] Genentech,[6] Google,[5] Glean,[48] Intuit,[43] Lotus Development,[49] Netscape,[18] Shazam,[50] Shyp,[51] Nest,[47] Sun Microsystems,[49] and Twitter.

[7] Some current investments include DJI, Handshake, Coursera,[7] Shape Security,[52] Farmers Business Network, Interos,[53] IronNet Cybersecurity, Desktop Metal, Gusto, Plaid, Rippling, Robinhood, Slack, UiPath, Netlify, Loom, Viz.ai, and Looker.