Open Core Ventures
Venture studioPre-SeedβSeed Β· 13 people tracked
Investment thesis
Open Core Ventures believes the most important future software companies are emerging from the open source community. Leveraging deep roots in open source and pattern recognition from hundreds of investments, the firm identifies durable business opportunities before they are widely considered fundable. When a project clears its bar, OCV starts a company and works alongside the founding team, pairing open source creators with experienced operators and providing structure to scale. It recruits both founding CTOs (open source creators) and founding CEOs (operators) to build venture-scale open core businesses using a proven playbook.
Source: firm website, verified Aug 3, 2026.
Team Β· 13 people
from the firm's website
What they invest in
from 17 of 22 portfolio companiesDeveloper Tools Γ11AI & Machine Learning Γ9Enterprise Software Γ7Cybersecurity Γ5SaaS Γ5Data & Infrastructure Γ4Cloud Computing Γ2IoT Γ2
HQs:United StatesΓ3
Investments Β· 22 tracked
founders shown can be your intro path
GitLab is an intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps that enables teams and AI agents to collaborate on the full software development lifecycle, from planning through deployment, with integrated security and compliance capabilities.
AI & Machine LearningCybersecurityDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Sid Sijbrandij(Founder/CEO)inDmytro Zaporozhets(Founder/CTO)inPaul Machle(Executive Officer)Dmitriy Zaporozhets(Cofounder)
BoardBruce Armstrong(Director)
authentik is a self-hosted, open source identity provider that lets organizations run their own authentication infrastructure with customizable policies, APIs, and prebuilt workflows.
CybersecurityDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
CoChat is an AI research assistant that searches academic literature across 200M+ papers, organizes sources into projects, and verifies every recommended citation against the real paper to filter out fabricated or misquoted references.
AI & Machine LearningEdTechSaaS
Fleet Device Management is the company behind an open-source device management platform that enrolls millions of laptops, servers, and other devices across Apple, Linux, Windows, and Android.
CybersecurityDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
Zach Wasserman(Cofounder)Mike McNeil(CEO)
Kedify provides a turnkey autoscaling platform for Kubernetes, built on the open-source KEDA project, that combines telemetry intake, resource right-sizing recommendations, HTTP/queue/GPU and multi-cluster autoscaling, and FinOps cost reporting.
Cloud ComputingDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
Open source project turned into a full-time company with OCV backing.
OpenCoreEMR is a full-featured electronic health record (EHR) platform for medical practices, offering built-in e-prescribing, eFax, eLabs, SMS appointment reminders, telehealth, scheduling, and AI-powered billing (RCM) at no cost.
Digital HealthHealthtechSaaS
Selora Homes builds an AI-powered smart home control system with a hub that integrates over 2,000 devices across brands and protocols, automating most of the programming for professional integrators.
AI & Machine LearningIoTPropTech
Stirling PDF offers a free, self-hostable PDF editor with 60+ operations for reading and editing files, plus automated pipelines that classify, protect, and route documents at scale.
CybersecurityDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
Company built with OCV support.
SurfSense is an open-source, NotebookLM-style research platform that lets users and AI agents pull live data from sources like Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Indeed, Google Maps, Google Search, Amazon, and Walmart through platform-native REST APIs or an MCP server.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper Tools
FlowFuse provides a secure and scalable platform built on the open-source Node-RED development tool, letting industrial enterprises build and deploy custom applications for their operations.
Developer ToolsIoTSaaSSan Francisco, US
Nick O'Leary(Founder)Aditya Singh(Director)Betty Ma(Director)Zeger-Jan van de Weg(Executive Officer, Director)
BoardMarkus Grundmann(Director)
Exits Β· 1
IPOs and acquisitions across the tracked portfolioGitLabNASDAQ: GTLB
Portfolio news
latest coverage across their companiesGitLab Β· kavout.com Β· Jul 17, 2026
Frequently asked questions
- What stage does Open Core Ventures invest at?
- Open Core Ventures invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed stages.
- What sectors does Open Core Ventures focus on?
- Open Core Ventures focuses on AI & Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, Data & Infrastructure, Developer Tools, Enterprise Software, SaaS.
Media Β· Podcasts & interviews
featuring the teamSid Sijbrandij (Open Core Ventures) & Bassam Tabbara on Distributed Storage, Ceph, and Rook
Open Core Ventures (OCV) Β· Sid Sijbrandij
Introducing Pulsey, our virtual Ops coworker
Open Core Ventures (OCV)
Founder Roundtable: Pricing Page Review
Open Core Ventures (OCV)
September 2025 Roundtable
Open Core Ventures (OCV)
AI Automation Developer
Open Core Ventures (OCV)
Open Core Roundtable with Sid Sijbrandij
Open Core Ventures (OCV)
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