Sequoia Capital Shuts London Office and Scouts Program

Sequoia Capital is unwinding roughly two decades of global expansion, closing its London office and shutting down the Scouts and Arc programs even as it announces about $10 billion in new funds, according to a memo the firm posted to X on Wednesday morning titled "The Sequoia of Tomorrow," as first reported by TechCrunch.

The memo frames the moves as forward-looking, but the substance points backward: Sequoia says it is emerging from a roughly 20-year expansionary phase during which it built multiple businesses across multiple geographies, an effort that, in the firm's own words, produced an unintended side effect — hierarchy. Nearly every program being dismantled this week was built during that stretch, under three successive stewards of the firm: Doug Leone, Jim Goetz and Roelof Botha, per TechCrunch.

What is Sequoia closing down?

The firm is shutting its London office, ending the Scouts and Arc programs, merging its early-stage and growth investing teams into one unit, flattening its partnership structure, and eliminating its long-standing Monday partner meeting, according to the memo cited by TechCrunch. Several employees will leave the firm as a direct result of the London closure.

Why is Sequoia ending Scouts and Arc?

Scouts, which Sequoia launched around 2009, gave small checks to founders and operators to invest on the firm's behalf, letting Sequoia see deals through people closer to emerging founders than any partner could be, TechCrunch reports. Jason Calacanis used the program to point Sequoia toward Uber, and Sam Altman brought Stripe to the firm as a scout. Brian Chesky and Dropbox co-founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston were also early scouts, according to the memo.

Arc, launched in March 2022, was Sequoia's answer to Y Combinator — a batch accelerator running several seven-week cohorts a year for pre-seed and seed founders, with admitted companies receiving $500,000 to $1 million up front, per TechCrunch. Both programs were bets on being early and being everywhere. The new memo signals the opposite priority: putting more energy behind fewer people and fewer things.

Why is Sequoia closing its London office?

Sequoia opened the London office in 2020. The memo states plainly that the firm no longer sees a need for a local presence, adding that Europe will keep producing "outlier founders" and that Sequoia can support them from the Bay Area, according to TechCrunch's account. The closure follows Andreessen Horowitz shuttering its own London office the prior year.

Luciana Lixandru, hired from Accel in 2020 as Sequoia's first partner in Europe, was offered a move to San Francisco and declined, TechCrunch reports. "Europe is where my family is, and where I want to build," she wrote on X. Lixandru says she remains a partner and will keep her board seats while investing personally in European founders going forward.

How is Sequoia flattening its partnership?

Alongside the office and program closures, Sequoia is merging its early-stage and growth investing teams into a single unit and flattening the partnership's internal structure, the memo says. The firm is also killing its Monday partner meeting — a recurring internal ritual that had become a symbol of the larger, more bureaucratic organization Sequoia built during its expansion years, per the TechCrunch report.

What does the timeline of Sequoia's expansion and retreat look like?

• Around 2009: Sequoia launches the Scouts program, giving small checks to founders and operators to invest on the firm's behalf.
• 2020: Sequoia opens its London office and hires Luciana Lixandru from Accel as its first European partner.
• March 2022: Sequoia launches Arc, a seven-week batch accelerator for pre-seed and seed founders modeled on Y Combinator.
• 2025: Andreessen Horowitz closes its London office.
• Nov. 4, 2026: Sequoia posts "The Sequoia of Tomorrow" memo, announcing roughly $10 billion in new funds alongside the closures of its London office, Scouts, and Arc, plus a flattened partnership.

What does this mean for founders outside Silicon Valley?

TechCrunch's reporting notes the message will be "particularly difficult to digest" for European entrepreneurs, especially given the earlier Andreessen Horowitz withdrawal from London. The memo's insistence that outlier founders can be supported remotely from the Bay Area leaves open the question of whether founders abroad will feel pressure to relocate or open a U.S. presence to stay close to one of the industry's most closely watched firms.

Sequoia has not detailed how the new roughly $10 billion in funds will be deployed differently from its prior structure, beyond the stated goal of a smaller, more concentrated organization centered on Silicon Valley.

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