Dick Kramlich, the venture capital pioneer who co-founded New Enterprise Associates almost 50 years ago and built it into a Silicon Valley powerhouse that regularly raised billion-dollar-plus funds, died on Saturday. He was 89.

His death was sudden and “he didn’t have a long illness,” his daughter, Christina Kramlich, confirmed to CNBC, adding that the family will provide more details soon.

“We’ve lost our warm, curious, ever-optimistic family leader,” she said.

Long before venture capitalist was an established profession, Kramlich saw the opportunity, to invest some cash in tech entrepreneurs and profit alongside of them, assuming they were successful. He’d put some of his own money into Apple before joining with Chuck Newhall and Frank Bonsal to start NEA in 1977, a few years after heavy hitters Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins opened their doors in Menlo Park, California.

Kramlich hit it big in computer networking, writing an early check to 3Com, which Bob Metcalfe started as a way to commercialize Ethernet technology. The company went public in 1984, and soared to a valuation of over $28 billion during the dot-com bubble of 2000. 3Com’s technology was eventually bypassed by products from Cisco and others and the company was purchased by HP in 2010 for $2.7 billion.

Elsewhere in the space, Kramlich invested in Grand Junction, started by a 3Com co-founder, and saw that company through to a 1995 sale to Cisco. And then there was data center networking company Force10 Networks, which was acquired by Dell in 2011.

“So we’ve gone from the very inception of the Ethernet through to its becoming the dominant protocol of the internet for network communications,” Kramlich said in a 2006 interview with oral historian Mauree Jane Perry.

Kramlich also backed companies including, Macromedia, Ascend Communications and Juniper Networks. In the fusion power market, Kramlich invested in TAE Technologies, and sat on the board until the day of his death.

Kramlich retired from NEA in 2012, around the time the firm raised $2.6 billion for its 14th fund, one of the biggest ever at the time in the industry. But he wasn’t done with investing.

In 2017, Kramlich started Green Bay Ventures to invest in companies developing technology and products in manufacturing, energy, transportation, logistics, real estate and communications. He launched Green Bay with Anthony Schiller, who started managing Kramlich’s family money in 2011, and Casey Tatham, who was running finance for the family office.

The firm was named after the Wisconsin town where Kramlich was born in 1935. Kramlich’s dad started a food chain there and his mom became an aeronautical engineer. After moving around Wisconsin as a kid, Kramlich went to college at Northwestern and then moved to the Boston area to pursue a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard.

Following business school, Kramlich got into the world of investments in Boston, and eventually met early Apple and Intel investor Arthur Rock. He moved to California and helped start Arthur Rock & Co. in 1969. Eight years later, Kramlich splintered off to start NEA, with operations in Baltimore, Maryland and Silicon Valley.

Scott Sandell, NEA’s executive chairman, joined the firm in 1996. He said he was working as a consultant and met Kramlich after pitching a startup to the firm, initially in the Baltimore office. His career trajectory quickly changed, and rather than raising money for the startup, he landed a job at NEA and has remained for almost three decades.

“He was the reason so many of us joined,” Sandell said in an interview. “Dick was beloved by countless entrepreneurs and venture capitalists because of his undying optimism and perseverance against really all odds. It was that spirit along with his generous and gracious ways that made him more loveable than perhaps any venture capitalist I’ve ever known.”

Kramlich is survived by his daughter Christina, as well as by his wife, Pam, and his other children, Rix and Mary Donna.

Tesla shares slid about 5% on Monday after President Donald Trump announced plans for extensive tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China.

The stock was also hit by declining registrations for Tesla vehicles in France, Sweden and Norway. Tesla fell more than its megacap peers, with Apple’s stock suffering the next biggest drop at more than 3%.

President Donald Trump over the weekend slapped 10% tariffs on goods imported from China, where Tesla produces about half its automobiles. While the tariffs are sure to hit all automakers’ supply chains, Tesla operates factories in the U.S., Berlin and Shanghai, enabling it to sidestep some of the challenges faced by other electric vehicle makers.

During Tesla’s earnings call last week, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said the company’s profitability could take a hit if the new administration implements tariffs. 

“Over the years we’ve tried to localize our supply chain in every market, but we are still reliant on parts from across the world for all our businesses,” Taneja said. He said the “imposition of tariffs” would “have an impact on our business and profitability.”

As for falling registrations In Europe, the drop was steepest in France, one of the continent’s largest EV markets. Tesla registrations there fell 63% in January from the same month a year earlier, according to data tracked by industry association PFA (Plateforme Automobile). That was a much steeper drop than the decline in electric cars and in overall automotive sales in France.

In Sweden and Norway, Tesla sales for January fell 44% and 38%, respectively, Reuters reported.

In addition to the tariffs and news about declining registrations, Tesla over the weekend also cut lease prices for its base Model 3 sedan and unpainted steel Cybertruck vehicles, according to listings for customers in the U.S. viewed by CNBC.

An independent researcher who publishes his Tesla forecasts under the handle “Troy Teslike” on Patreon wrote, in a post on X, that he only expects Tesla to sell about 21,000 units of its Cybertruck in 2025.

“The order backlog is gone,” he wrote. “Tesla ended 2024 with 10,600 unsold Cybertrucks because of too much production and low demand. The backlog dropped to zero on November 24, 2024, when Tesla’s order page in the US showed that customers could order and take delivery of a Cybertruck on the same day.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was a major backer of Trump’s presidential effort, contributing $290 million to Republican candidates and causes in 2024, most of that directed at returning Trump to the White House. Musk also recently endorsed Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

As CNBC previously reported, Musk’s incendiary rhetoric and political activism have contributed to a decline in Tesla’s brand value and reputation. Tesla’s brand value fell 26% in 2024, according to consulting firm Brand Finance.

WATCH: Tesla stock is disconnected from fundamentals

Apple shares fell more than 3% on Monday after President Donald Trump announced 10% tariffs on China, where the company assembles the majority of its products.

Apple’s decline was steeper than all of the tech megacaps, other than Tesla, and shows how vulnerable the iPhone manufacturer could be to increased import costs.

While Apple faced tariffs during the first Trump administration, the company was largely able to avoid fees by securing waivers for its specific products. It also expanded its supply chain to do some assembly in countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and India. But Apple remains reliant on Chinese production.

Apple declined to comment on tariffs. They go into effect on Tuesday.

“Apple being included in China tariffs is contrary to our expectations,” wrote Rosenblatt analyst Barton Crockett in a note on Monday.

Crockett wrote that he expects Apple to pass price increases to the consumer, a move that he said could upset Trump. “We thought history would repeat. But that’s not the case right now,” Rosenblatt wrote.

Last week, Apple reported 4% revenue growth in the December quarter to $124 billion. However, the company guided investors to expect merely “low to mid single digits” growth in the current quarter, and said sales in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong declined 11% in the latest period.

The ultimate effect of the tariffs on Apple’s profit may depend on how much U.S. demand the company can fill from production locations outside of China.

If Apple can source 80% of U.S.-bound devices from outside of China and doesn’t raise prices, it could hurt annual earnings by 5 cents per share, or less than 1%, according to a note on Monday from Bank of America Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan. If half of U.S. Apple devices are from China, it would hurt Apple’s full-year earnings by 12 cents, Mohan estimates.

For the fiscal year ending in September, analysts expect Apple to report earnings of $7.34, according to LSEG.

“As the new tariff is imposed on imports from China, Apple could have its manufacturing partners ramp up production in India and ship to the U.S.,” Mohan wrote. “This could also be done for other Apple products that are manufactured in countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.”

WATCH: Apple ‘built for earnings resiliency’