Fundraising Fox
Outset Capital
Venture capitalActively deployingSan Francisco · Pre-Seed–Series A · 8 people tracked
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Investment thesis
Outset Capital positions itself as builders backing builders, investing before other investors and writing small checks instead of leading rounds. The team of three focuses on AI, developer tools, robotics, and the future of work, drawing on experience building 100B+ parameter foundation models, raising over $200M in venture capital, and scaling teams. It describes itself as active but not activist, aiming to be the most helpful investor per dollar while always siding with founders. The firm emphasizes community, hosting events and dinners for founders, engineers, and researchers in the Bay Area.
Source: firm website, verified Sep 26, 2026.
Team · 8 people
from the firm's website & public directories
Founder mafia
2 people who came through Outset Capital went on to found or lead other companies.
What they invest in
from 22 of 30 portfolio companiesAI & Machine Learning ×16Developer Tools ×9Enterprise Software ×8SaaS ×7Data & Infrastructure ×4Advanced Manufacturing ×3Deep Tech ×3Robotics ×3
HQs:United States×21
Who they back
founder profiles across 18 portfolio companiesFounding team size:solo founder×52 founders×63 founders×44+ founders×3
Where their founders studiedfrom 27 founders with education data
Massachusetts Institute of Technology ×4Stanford University ×4University of California, Berkeley ×4Brown University ×2UC San Diego ×2University of Virginia ×2
What their founders studiedfrom 27 founders with field-of-study data
Computer Science ×15Engineering ×4Life Sciences ×4Humanities ×2Mathematics & Statistics ×2
Where their founders worked beforefrom 32 founders with career history
Google ×10Stanford University ×4Goldman Sachs ×3Bain & Company ×2Carya Venture Partners ×2Dropbox ×2Google Deepmind ×2Meta ×2
Accelerator rootsportfolio companies that came through a program
8 founders hold a PhD · 1 hold an MBA (of 30 with degree data)
Investments · 30 tracked
founders shown can be your intro pathBy year:2026 · 12024 · 32022 · 15 dated
DatologyAI provides automated data curation for AI model training, helping companies identify and remove low-quality data to improve model performance and reduce computational costs.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureRedwood City, US
Ari Morcos(Founder)inBogdan Gaza(Founder)inMatthew Leavitt(Founder)in
Co-investorsFelicis VenturesRadical VenturesAmplify PartnersM12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund)Amazon Alexa FundConviction VC+2 more
Ares Industries designs and manufactures precision missiles (Maverick and Goose) for military defense, built at volume with five-figure unit costs for use by the U.S. and allied forces.
Advanced ManufacturingDefense TechSpace TechLos Angeles, US
Alex Tseng(CEO)inDevan Plantamura(Founder)in
Co-investorsSHORY Combinator468 CapitalAgrolimen VenturesAndreessen HorowitzCapitalize VC+10 more
Browserbase provides a browser automation platform that enables AI agents to interact with websites reliably, handling authentication, navigation, and complex actions to automate web-based workflows and data collection.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper Tools
Paul Klein(Founder)Paul Klein IV(Founder)
Co-investorsavraCRV (Charles River Ventures)Kleiner PerkinsNotable CapitalWayfinder VenturesBase Case Capital+4 more
Charge Robotics automates labor-intensive tasks in solar construction to address deployment bottlenecks as demand for solar energy grows.
Advanced ManufacturingCleantechClimate TechConstruction TechRoboticsSan Francisco, US
Banks Hunter(Founder)inMax Justicz(Founder)inPhaedra Randolph(Head of Strategy and Operations)inHardeep Dhillon(Head of Talent Acquisition)Alec Page(Head of Operations \u0026 Strategy)Shreya Nathan(Chief of Staff)
Co-investorsATEL VenturesCollaborative FundFoundersX VenturesSoma CapitalSun Road SyndicateThe E14 Fund+3 more
Harper Insure is an insurance broker that uses data analytics and human expertise to match commercial clients with appropriate insurance carriers and coverage.
AI & Machine LearningFintechInsurTechSan Francisco, US
Dakotah Rice(CEO)inTushar Nair(CTO)inShabaig ChathaRichard Wyatt(Ops)
Co-investorsAmino CapitalAntlerDG Daiwa VenturesLobster CapitalLynett Capital PartnersOlive Tree Capital+14 more
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Hedra is an AI-powered creative platform that generates visual content including graphics, videos, and product shots for creators and brands.
AI & Machine LearningCreator EconomyMarketing TechMedia & EntertainmentNew York, US
Michael Lingelbach(Founder)in
Co-investorsAbstract VenturesAndreessen HorowitzAlexa FundIndex VenturesAmazon Alexa Fund
Personal website of Josh Albrecht, co-founder of the AI company Imbue (formerly Generally Intelligent), which develops open, transparent, user-aligned AI agents.
AI & Machine LearningSan Francisco, US
Josh Albrecht(Co-founder)in
Personal website of Kanjun Qiu, whose main focus is Imbue, a company building AI agents that help people create and edit software by translating ideas into code.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsSan Francisco, US
Kanjun Qiu(Founder)in
Co-investorsAstera InstituteNVIDIAY Combinator
Kindred is a platform that facilitates home swaps between travelers, connecting people who exchange their homes for periods of time.
MarketplacesTravel & HospitalitySan Francisco, US
Justine Palefsky(Founder)inTasneem Amina(Founder)inJessica de Mesa-Lim(Founder)
Co-investorsAndreessen HorowitzAsymmetric Capital PartnersAvenir Growth CapitalBessemer Venture PartnersBoxGroupCaffeinated Capital+7 more
Computer chip manufacturer building high-performance, cost-efficient platforms optimized for large-scale AI workloads.
Covina, US
Michial Gunter(Executive Officer, Director)Reiner Pope(Founder)inMike Gunter(Founder)inReiner Pope Mike Gunter(Founder)
BoardYasmin Razavi(Director)in
Co-investorsAIspace VenturesHarpoon VenturesHomebrewResonance VCSpark CapitalSV Angel+2 more
Medra builds robotic systems integrated with AI, computer vision, and natural language processing to automate data collection for life science research.
AI & Machine LearningBiotechDeep TechRoboticsSan Francisco, US
Michelle Lee(Founder)inNat Friedman(Founder)inRussell Ohnemus(Founder)
Co-investors515 VenturesavraCarbon SiliconFifty YearsFusionHuman Capital+7 more
Orbillion Bio develops cultivated beef using computational optimization and proprietary bioprocess controls to achieve cost-competitive production at scale without genetic modification or expensive growth factors.
Advanced ManufacturingClimate TechSan Francisco, US
Patricia Bubner(Founder)inSamet Yildirim(Founder, COO \u0026 CTO)Gabriel Levesque Tremblay
Co-investorsAt One VenturesBeresford VenturesBig Idea VenturesBrincC3 VenturesEarth Venture Capital+21 more
Physical Intelligence develops generalist AI models for robotics that can control any robot to perform various tasks through learning algorithms and multi-robot training.
AI & Machine LearningDeep TechRoboticsSan Francisco, US
Sergey Levine(Founder)Adnan Esmail(Founder)inBrian Ichter(Founder)inKarol Hausman(Founder)inLachy Groom(Founder)inQuan Vuong(Founder)in
Co-investorsCapitalGKhosla VenturesLux CapitalRedpoint VenturesSequoia CapitalThrive Capital+36 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, Co-CEO)inShumeet Baluja(Founder, Co-CEO)
Co-investorsOperator Collective468 CapitalCharacterFYRFLY Venture PartnersSurface VenturesY Combinator
Proliferate is an open-source agent workspace that runs multiple AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and open models) in parallel on local or cloud infrastructure.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSan Francisco, US
Pablo Hansen(Founder)in
Co-investorsAccelmed PartnersPioneerTrue VenturesY CombinatorZero IndexAndreessen Horowitz+12 more
Promptless automatically generates and suggests documentation updates when product changes occur, such as code PRs, Slack threads, or support tickets.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSan Francisco, US
Prithvi Ramakrishnan(Founder)inFrances Liu(Founder)in
Co-investorsFundersClubOrange CollectiveY CombinatorBasis Set VenturesEmergence Capital PartnersPalm Drive Capital+2 more
Reflex is a platform for building and deploying enterprise applications in Python, combining framework, infrastructure, and data connectivity in a single unified system.
AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSector AgnosticSan Francisco, US
Nikhil Rao(Founder)inAlek Petuskey(Founder)inJackie Tung(Founding Engineer)Masen Furer(Founding Engineer)Simon Young(Founding Engineer)Tom Gotsman(Founding Engineer)
Co-investorsLattice CapitalAbstract VenturesAnsa CapitalBoxGroupLux CapitalPICUS CAPITAL+10 more
Rovi provides members with access to clinician guidance for navigating healthcare, finding quality doctors, managing benefits, and coordinating care.
Digital HealthHealthtechNew York City, US
Santosh Vallabhaneni(CEO)inTarun Vallabhaneni(CTO)inSantosh Vallabhaneni Tarun Vallabhaneni(Founder)Connor Riley(Chief of Staff)James McMenamin(Recruiter)Gem Martinez(Recruiter)
Co-investorsExceptional CapitalPioneerY CombinatorDigital Health VenturesGradient VenturesLightspeed Venture Partners+5 more
Sanas builds real-time Speech AI technology that removes communication barriers caused by accents, languages, background noise, and audio quality issues.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareSaaSStanford, US
Shawn Zhang(Founder)inMax Serebryakov(Founder)inAndrés Pérez Soderi(Founder)inSharath Keshava Narayana(Founder)inAndres Perez Soderi(Founder)Maxim Serebryakov(Founder)
Co-investorsDN CapitalGeneral CatalystHuman CapitalInsight PartnersQuadrille CapitalAdapt Ventures+11 more
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SimpleHash provides NFT indexing and data infrastructure for blockchain applications, helping companies reduce costs and improve customer experience in the crypto ecosystem.
Crypto & Web3Data & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSan Francisco, US
Olly Wilson(Founder)inAlex Kilkka(Founder)in
Co-investorsBitDAOCoinbase VenturesFundersClubMantle NetworkY CombinatorBonfire Union+5 more
StarSling builds AI-native continuous integration for GitHub Actions, providing fast runners and agents that analyze workflows, logs, and telemetry to automatically open pull requests optimizing CI pipelines.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSan Francisco, US
Yonas Beshawred(CEO)inDaniel Worku(CTO)in
Co-investorsY CombinatorTranspose Platform ManagementVermilion Cliffs VenturesBatch VenturesBessemer Venture PartnersCervin+3 more
Tako builds a tool that helps knowledge workers find, access, and share information to support data-driven decisions.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
Alex Rosenberg(Founder)inBobby Abbott(Founder)Fernando Gadotti(Founder)
Co-investorsHaun VenturesTiger Global ManagementAbstract VenturesA*Andreessen HorowitzRibbit Capital
Other
Tracked investments with no reachable website or further public details — typically companies that wound down, renamed, or were absorbed.
AI DungeonCandorCo-investors: Arash FerdowsiMetaHuman CreatorWithkeystone
Portfolio news
latest coverage across their companiesStarSling · ycombinator.com · Jun 29, 2026
Harper · fintech.global · Feb 26, 2026
Proliferate · ycombinator.com · Feb 23, 2026
Poetiq · thesaasnews.com · Feb 3, 2026
Kindred · finance.yahoo.com · Feb 3, 2026
Medra · finsmes.com · Dec 12, 2025
Rovi Health · ycombinator.com · Oct 28, 2025
Reflex · ycombinator.com · Oct 22, 2025
Frequently asked questions
- How many investments has Outset Capital made?
- Outset Capital has 30 tracked investments, 2 of which have exited, including 2 dated in the last 24 months.
- What stage does Outset Capital invest at?
- Outset Capital invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A stages.
- What is Outset Capital's typical check size?
- Outset Capital typically writes checks of $200K – $400K.
- What sectors does Outset Capital focus on?
- Outset Capital focuses on AI & Machine Learning, Developer Tools, Enterprise Software, Future of Work, Robotics, SaaS.
- Where is Outset Capital located?
- Outset Capital is headquartered in San Francisco, US.
- Does Outset Capital lead rounds?
- Outset Capital typically participates in rounds rather than leading them.
- Who does Outset Capital co-invest with?
- Outset Capital most often shares deals with Y Combinator, Abstract Ventures, avra, among 92 tracked co-investors.
From the blog
visit blog ↗Outset Capital has written about scientific AI applications through portfolio coverage, and regularly produces commentary on AI industry developments including IPOs, competitive positioning, regulatory challenges, and whether widespread AI tools create genuine business advantages. AI summary
Media · Podcasts & interviews
from their channelJEV and why AI won't kill us DIRECTLY
Outset Capital
NVIDIA’s $13B Hugging Face Acquisition Is an Open Source Bet
Outset Capital
NVIDIA'S HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD STRATEGY
Outset Capital
I'm becoming more ADD by the day
Outset Capital
AI Agents Escaping Sandboxes = Bad Engineering?
Outset Capital
How to Keep AI-Generated Code From Becoming a Mess | V&B EP 08
Outset Capital
Images
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