Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA – Global private equity firm The Carlyle Group today announced the final closing of its third U.S.-focused venture and growth capital fund, with $605 million of equity commitments. The fund, Carlyle Venture Partners III, L.P. (CVP III), is Carlyle’s largest U.S. venture fund to date.

Carlyle’s previous U.S. venture and growth funds include Carlyle Venture Partners I (CVP I), closed in 1997 with $210 million in equity commitments, and Carlyle Venture Partners II (CVP II), closed in 2002 with $602 million in equity commitments. These funds have invested in such companies as Blackboard (Nasdaq: BBBB), AuthenTec (Nasdaq: AUTH), Matrics (acquired by Symbol Technologies/Motorola, NYSE: MOT), and Indigo Systems (acquired by Flir Systems, Inc., Nasdaq: FLIR).

“We are grateful for our investors’ continuing support and faith in us. We will continue to take advantage of the tremendous innovation occurring in the world today and the growth investment opportunities arising from this innovation,” said Robert E. Grady, Managing Director and Co-head of Carlyle Venture Partners.

Carlyle entered the venture capital business in 1997 with CVP I. Today, Carlyle’s venture and growth capital group manages more than $3.8 billion in nine funds operating in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Carlyle’s latest U.S. fund, CVP III, will employ a multi-stage “growth equity” approach, investing in a mix of early stage venture capital, expansion stage growth capital and growth buyout transactions. The fund will help its portfolio companies expand by using Carlyle’s global platform and domain expertise in such sectors as telecom and media, defense and aerospace, automotive and logistics, energy, technology and business services to help its companies expand internationally and grow sales.

“As traditional buyout funds have gotten significantly larger, there is an attractive opportunity to acquire growing businesses using modest leverage in a way that provides an attractive risk-reward tradeoff for investors and that is consistent with Carlyle’s historic strength in small buyouts,” said Brooke B. Coburn, Managing Director and Co-head of Carlyle Venture Partners.