By Senior staff writer – Easton Ellsworth

Despite struggling economies in the U.S. and around the world, venture capitalist company Accel Partners has managed to add more than $1 billion to their funds. Founded in 1983, Accel will divide its financial blessing into two funds: the Accel Growth fund ($480 million) for IT development and the Accel London III fund ($525 million) for early- and late-stage European and Israeli start-up companies.

So how is it even possible to drum up ten digits of funding in today’s weak global economy?

Well, for starters, not everybody’s hurting. Plenty of investors saw this bear market coming and ducked. Many others have been hurt by the down economy but are looking to capitalize on the potential to get better terms in deals with fund recipients, who may be more desperate than usual.

Another factor here is that Accel Partners is huge, relatively speaking, in the VC industry. It has funded Facebook and BitTorrent, among others.

Of course no single tech startup is going to receive all or even close to all of that cool billion. But dozens will surely line up at Accel’s doors knowing the strength of the company they’d be receiving investment from.