Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Last week, we heard from Evelyn Rusli at the New York Times that venture firm Andreessen Horowitz was in the process of raising $1.5 billion for the venture firm. Today, partner Ben Horowitz has confirmed that the fund has closed, bringing Andreessen Horowitz’s total funding under management to $2.7 billion.

One of the differentiators Horowitz and Andreessen made with their fund is that the firm’s network be made available firm wide, Horowitz explains in his blog post. This has helped create a vast network for portfolio companies, he says.

Horowitz reveals that in 2011, the firm hosted over 600 portfolio presentations to corporate customers and partners at our office in Menlo Park. These presentations resulted in more than 3,000 introductions between portfolio companies and prospective Fortune 500/Global 2000 senior executives.

The firm has relationships with over 4,000 engineers, designers and product managers, has made more than 1,300 introductions to portfolio companies, resulting in 130 hires within the portfolio. And Andreessen Horowitz has added over 550 executives to its network in 2011 and made more than 300 executive introductions to portfolio companies.