The 31 individual partners of Sequoia Capital and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, the US venture capital firms, stand to gain an average of at least $7m (€6m) apiece from the flotation of Google, the internet search engine, which bankers expect to float for $15bn to $25bn.

Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins led Google's only financing round in June 1999, and the funds they manage received at least 5% of the start-up company's equity from this round, according to industry sources. Google received $25m from their funds, Stanford University and two individual investors: Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Ram Shriram, vice-president of business development at Amazon.com.