Character
Venture capitalActively deployingMilwaukee · Pre-Seed–Series A · 3 people tracked
Also known as CHARACTER CAPITAL LLC
Investment thesis
Built around the Design Sprint method, they focus on AI in science/medicine, run a small accelerator (Labs, cohorts ≤15), and provide direct partner access and open training.
Source: firm website, verified Aug 25, 2026.
Team · 3 people
from public directoriesWhat they invest in
from 34 of 35 portfolio companiesAI & Machine Learning ×24SaaS ×14Enterprise Software ×10Healthtech ×7Data & Infrastructure ×6Deep Tech ×6Digital Health ×6Developer Tools ×5
HQs:United States×18
Investments · 35 tracked
founders shown can be your intro pathBy year:2026 · 12025 · 62024 · 12014 · 19 dated
Bindwell develops pesticides using artificial intelligence and machine learning to address crop loss and pest resistance.
Advanced ManufacturingAgTechAI & Machine LearningSan Francisco, US
Tyler Rose(Founder)inNavvye Anand(Founder)in
Co-investorsY CombinatorGeneral CatalystSV Angel468 CapitalA.Capital VenturesLombardstreet Ventures
Coheso provides an AI-powered "legal front door" that captures legal requests from email, Slack, and Teams into a single queue, answering routine questions from company documents and routing complex matters to attorneys with AI-drafted reviews and context attached.
AI & Machine LearningLegalTechSaaS
Ned Gannon(CEO)inManish Agnihotri(Co-Founder & Head of Artificial Intelligence)inChirag Mehta(Co-Founder & Head of Product)inAditya Rathod(Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer)
Co-investorsTola CapitalCrew CapitalFirsthandVCConnecticut Innovations
1Fort AI builds an AI workforce platform for insurance brokers that automates manual workflows like quoting, invoicing, and servicing, enabling brokers to spend more time with clients.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareInsurTechSaaSNew York, US
Anthony Marshi(CEO)inToby Hung(COO)inLeon Rishniw(CTO)in
Co-investors8-Bit CapitalBonfire VenturesConnetic VenturesDraper AssociatesCharacter VCCompany Ventures+2 more
Amari is a customs entry automation platform that uses AI to interpret trade regulations, extract data from shipping documents, classify HTS codes, and generate ABI-ready draft customs entries for review.
AI & Machine LearningLogistics & Supply ChainSaaS
Apoxy provides a hosted data plane for managing both ingress and egress traffic without sidecars, built on Envoy and the CNCF Gateway API for Kubernetes.
Cloud ComputingData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
Matt Ward(Founder)inDmitry Ilyevsky(Founder)in
Co-investorsY Combinator
AxionOrbital Space develops AI models that convert synthetic aperture radar data into optical-like imagery, enabling continuous Earth observation regardless of cloud cover or time of day.
Advanced ManufacturingSpace TechSan Francisco, US
Dhenenjay Yadav(Founder)inAtharva Peshkar(Founder)in
Co-investorsY Combinator
CTGT develops a governance layer for AI systems that enables direct intervention at the neural network representation level to ensure reliable, policy-aligned AI behavior for enterprises.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeep TechEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Cyril Gorlla(Founder)inTrevor Tuttle(Founder)in
Co-investorsGradient VenturesLoup VenturesSterling RoadTranspose Platform ManagementY CombinatorGeneral Catalyst+2 more
Decisional provides AI agents that automate operational tasks within existing business software, handling workflows such as expense reconciliation, preventive maintenance, and field service management.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSan Francisco, US
Dhruv Tandon(Co-Founder, CEO)inSai Neeraj Kanuri(Founder)inAdit Sanghvi(Founder)in
Co-investorsMoonfire VenturesY Combinator
Extend builds infrastructure that processes unstructured data at scale for applications in healthcare, real estate, insurance, and finance.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareNew York City, US
Kushal Byatnal(Founder)inEli Badgio(Founder)in
Co-investorsHawk Hill VenturesHomebrewY CombinatorB CapitalCommerce VenturesFinTech Collective+2 more
Fathom provides AI-powered meeting intelligence that automatically captures notes, summaries, and transcripts while surfacing decisions and action items across Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareFuture of WorkSaaSSan Francisco, US
Richard White(Founder)in
Co-investorsACTAI VenturesEarl Grey CapitalTelescope PartnersY CombinatorChemistryMaven Ventures+1 more
Folia Health is a digital health platform that enables patients and caregivers to track symptoms, treatments, and health outcomes through personalized surveys, generating home-reported outcomes data used by life sciences companies and researchers to understand real-world treatment impacts.
Data & InfrastructureDigital HealthHealthtechMassachusetts, US
Nell Meosky Luo(CEO and Chairman)inDan Toffling(Co-Founder & CTO)Paul T. Meosky(Executive Officer, Director)
Co-investorsBantam GroupCrosslink CapitalJoyance PartnersLaunchpad Venture GroupSocial StartsTBD Angels+5 more
Hatch Fertility is an egg donation and surrogacy agency that matches intended parents with screened egg donors and surrogates and supports them through the family-building process.
Digital HealthFemTechHealthtech
Co-investorsBlue Sea CapitalHighland Creek PartnersDifferential VenturesTiferes Ventures
Hatch is a platform that helps nonprofit fundraisers, prospect researchers, and campaign managers identify and cultivate donors by enriching their donor CRM data with up to 90 additional data points from licensed third-party sources.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureImpact & Social GoodSaaS
Co-investorsDifferential Ventures
House Rx provides a platform that enables physicians and pharmacists at specialty clinics to collaborate on medical and pharmacy care delivery.
Enterprise SoftwareHealthtechSaaS
Ogi Kavazovic(Founder)in
Co-investors1984 Ventures Management, LlcBessemer Venture PartnersCencora VenturesNew Enterprise Associates (NEA)LRVHealthMaverick Ventures
Hypernatural is an AI video editor that lets brands and storytellers generate, storyboard, and edit full-length videos from scripts, visuals, and audio.
AI & Machine LearningCreator EconomyMarketing TechMedia & EntertainmentElm Grove, US
Chris Kolbe(Executive Officer, Director)
Co-investorsAdverb VenturesAIX VenturesUnderscore VCCharacter VC
Inductive Bio builds AI and machine learning software to accelerate drug discovery for pharmaceutical and biotech researchers, combining computational chemistry with expertise in translating complex drug programs from preclinical to clinical stages.
AI & Machine LearningBiotechDeep TechBrooklyn, US
Josh Haimson(Executive Officer, Director)inBen Birnbaum(Ph.D.)inAlexander Taylor(Ph.D.)in
BoardRohan Ganesh(Director)in
Co-investorsAlleyCorpAndreessen HorowitzCoalition OperatorsLux CapitalObvious VenturesAlley Robotics Ventures+3 more
Intermezzo offers an API-first platform that automates global payroll processing and tax filing across countries, including gross-to-net calculations, filing and reporting, payslips, and accounting syncs.
AI & Machine LearningFintechHR TechLas Vegas, US
Jeffrey Robert Baldi(Director)
Orbital Industries is an "AI Industrial" company that develops physical AI models—including AI-accelerated simulators and autoresearch agents for advanced materials—to speed up the design and manufacture of hardware products.
AI & Machine LearningDeep TechNew Materials
Co-investorsFly Ventures
Phaidra develops an AI control platform that uses reinforcement learning to optimize energy efficiency and operational performance in data centers and AI factories.
AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingDeep TechEnergySeattle, US
Jim Gao(Chief Executive Officer)inVeda Panneershelvam(Chief Technology Officer)inKatie Hoffman(President and Chief Operating Officer)inVedavyas Panneershelvam(Founder)in
Co-investorsCollaborative FundCool Climate CollectiveEast Valley VenturesFlying Fish VenturesIncubate USIndex Ventures+8 more
Poetiq builds self-improving AI systems that sit on top of existing LLMs to extract and synthesize their embedded knowledge into reliable reasoning strategies, using far less data than traditional reinforcement learning post-training.
AI & Machine LearningDeep TechEnterprise SoftwareMountain View, US
Ian Fischer(Founder)in
Co-investorsOperator CollectiveOutset Capital468 CapitalFYRFLY Venture PartnersSurface VenturesY Combinator
Reclaim offers an AI scheduling assistant that automatically optimizes a user's calendar around priorities, meetings, tasks, and focus time.
AI & Machine LearningFuture of WorkMarketing TechSaaSSales TechSeattle, US
Henry S.(Founder)inAlexandra Taylor(Director, Promoter)Kyle Buckingham(Executive Officer, Director, Promoter)
Co-investorsCorrelation VenturesFirebolt Ventures Management Company, LlcFlying Fish VenturesGradient VenturesAcrew CapitalIbex Investors+1 more
SkillSync provides a shared platform for storing and organizing AI coding agent sessions, letting users centralize sessions from tools like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, share them via URL, and convert successful workflows into reusable skills.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsSaaS
Sohar Health is a front-end revenue cycle management platform that uses technology and machine learning to automate insurance claims processing for healthcare providers.
AI & Machine LearningDigital HealthEnterprise SoftwareHealthtechNew York City, US
Dr Ashish Mandavia MD(Founder)inLucas Gordon(Founder)inAshish Mandavia(MD)in
Co-investorsKindred CapitalRLC VenturesY CombinatorGeneral CatalystRebel Fund
TimeCopilot is an open-source forecasting agent that pairs large language models with time series foundation models (such as Amazon Chronos, Salesforce Moirai, Google TimesFM, and Nixtla TimeGPT) to automate model selection, forecasting, and natural-language explanation.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper Tools
Azul GarzaRenée Rosillo
Versa provides a receipt capture and reconciliation platform for corporate travel and expense management.
Enterprise SoftwareFintechSaaSNew York City, US
Ted Power(Founder)inThomas Moore(Founder)in
Co-investorsY CombinatorS3 Ventures
Weave Bio offers an AI-native regulatory platform for preparing and managing eCTD-formatted regulatory dossiers, automating data organization, authoring, review, publishing and response management across the therapeutic lifecycle.
AI & Machine LearningBiotechSaaSSan Francisco, US
Ari Caroline(Founder)
Co-investorsFirsthandVCGround Up VenturesMagnetic VenturesRaptor GroupTMVUS Venture Partners+1 more
Zest is an online gifting platform that lets ecommerce brands sell gifts to individual and corporate customers directly from their websites, with features for multi-recipient checkout, gift messaging, self-service B2B storefronts, and corporate gift project management.
E-commerceRetail TechSaaS
Portfolio news
latest coverage across their companiesHatch · streetinsider.com · Aug 4, 2026
Reclaim · pymnts.com · Jul 29, 2026
Folia Health · fortuneindia.com · Jul 17, 2026

Fathom · stocktitan.net · Jul 16, 2026
Poetiq · thesaasnews.com · Feb 3, 2026
AxionOrbital Space · ycombinator.com · Jan 6, 2026
Bindwell · founderstoday.news · Nov 15, 2025
Frequently asked questions
- What stage does Character invest at?
- Character invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A stages.
- What is Character's typical check size?
- Character typically writes checks of $2M.
- What sectors does Character focus on?
- Character focuses on Biotech, Enterprise Software, Healthtech, SaaS.
- Where is Character located?
- Character is headquartered in Milwaukee, US.
- Does Character lead rounds?
- Character typically participates in rounds rather than leading them.
Media · Podcasts & interviews
featuring the teamMaking time for what matters | Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky (Authors of Make Time, Character VC)
Lenny's Podcast · John Zeratsky
John Zeratsky, Character Capital GP on Startup Sprints & Design DNA
Grace Gong · John Zeratsky
Quantifying Startup Potential: The OATS Scorecard | John Zeratsky | Character
Understanding VC · John Zeratsky
Co-investors · 1
Cultivation Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies with the potential to transform how people live and work, backing them from Series Seed through Series B.
Firms observed investing alongside Character, from public investor directories. Shared companies are the overlap with Character's recorded portfolio.
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