Fundraising Fox
U First Capital
Venture capitalOperating companySilicon Valley · 3 people tracked
Also known as U First Capital Creek
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Investment thesis
U First Capital invests in top-tier technology companies, leveraging its founders' technical backgrounds (both hold technical PhDs) and deep relationships with VCs and leading entrepreneurs built over decades in Silicon Valley. The firm emphasizes a strong track record of exits, citing companies such as Groq, Observo AI, Rapid Deploy, Rubrik, Worldcoin, Pensando Systems, Nextdoor, Palantir, and Pinterest across acquisitions, IPOs, and token launches.
Source: firm website, verified Aug 3, 2026.
Team · 3 people
from the firm's website & curated & public directories
Ekta Dang, a PhD in physics with IEEE publications, writes about AI and quantum computing and runs a VC-as-a-Service model embedding with Fortune 100s to scout startups and structure innovation.
Sanjit Dang is an investor at Groq and co-founder and chairman of U First Capital, which offers venture capital services to corporations. During his tenure at Intel Capital, he was involved with portfolio companies that achieved multiple exits, including IPOs such as Palantir, Pinterest, and DocuSign, as well as acquisitions including Body Labs by Amazon and Basis Science by Intel. His investment experience spans artificial intelligence, security, big data, IoT, and eCommerce across consumer and enterprise sectors, with board positions at companies including True Fit, Reflektion, and Helpshift.
Founder mafia
2 people who came through U First Capital went on to found or lead other companies.
What they invest in
from 20 of 25 portfolio companiesAI & Machine Learning ×15Enterprise Software ×11SaaS ×8Cybersecurity ×4Cloud Computing ×3Crypto & Web3 ×3Data & Infrastructure ×3Developer Tools ×3
HQs:United States×18
Who they back
founder profiles across 17 portfolio companiesFounding team size:2 founders×83 founders×24+ founders×7
Where their founders studiedfrom 28 founders with education data
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur ×3Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi ×3Stanford University ×3The University of Texas at Austin ×2University of California, Berkeley ×2University of Massachusetts Amherst ×2Yale University ×2
What their founders studiedfrom 26 founders with field-of-study data
Computer Science ×15Engineering ×5Economics ×2Finance & Accounting ×2Humanities ×2
Where their founders worked beforefrom 30 founders with career history
Google ×8Microsoft ×3Oracle ×3Adentro ×2Benchmark ×2deliv ×2Helium ×2Nutanix ×2
Accelerator rootsportfolio companies that came through a program
2 founders hold a PhD · 3 hold an MBA (of 29 with degree data)
Investments · 25 tracked
founders shown can be your intro pathBy year:2026 · 12025 · 12024 · 22021 · 12018 · 12013 · 17 dated
Neighborhood social network; IPO 2021
AdTechSan Francisco, US
Nirav Tolia(Founder)inSarah Leary(Founder)inPrakash Janakiraman(Founder)inDavid Wiesen(Founder)inIndrajit Ponnambalam(Chief Financial Officer)Sarah Friar(Former CEO, President & Chairperson)in
Co-investorsAxel Springer Digital VenturesBond Capital ManagementCoatue ManagementComcast VenturesCota CapitalDag Ventures+25 more
Palantir builds data integration and analysis platforms — Gotham for defence and government, Foundry for commercial operations — and deploys forward engineers inside customer organisations.
Palo Alto, US
Peter Thiel(Founder)inStephen Cohen(Founder)Nathan Gettings(Founder)Joe Lonsdale(Founder)inAlexander C. Karp(Founder)Alex Karp(Founder)
Co-investors137 Ventures8VCA*AiSprouts VCAkkadian VenturesAllied Venture Partners+73 more
Pinterest operates a visual discovery platform where users save and browse images organised into boards, used heavily for shopping, recipes and design.
San Francisco, US
Evan Sharp(Founder)Ben Silbermann(Founder)inPaul Sciarra(Founder)Mike Yang(Executive Officer)Natalie Fair(Executive Officer)inBill Ready(Chief Executive Officer)in
Co-investors3Spoke CapitalA.Capital VenturesA*Acequia Capital (AceCap)Allied Venture PartnersAmakor+64 more
Securing the world's data
Palo Alto, US
Bipul Sinha(Founder)inArvind Nithrakashyap(Founder)inArvind Jain(Founder)inSoham Mazumdar(Founder)inKiran Choudary(Chief Financial Officer)inJesse Green(Chief Revenue Officer)in
Co-investors3Spoke CapitalAccess Ventures (New York)Adit Ventures Management, LlcAnicut CapitalBain Capital VenturesChamaeleon+24 more
Checkr provides background verification and fraud detection services for hiring, loan approvals, insurance, and tenant screening decisions.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareHR TechSaaSSan Francisco, US
Daniel Yanisse(CEO)inJonathan Perichon(Founder)inNaeem Ishaq(Executive Officer)inJennifer Yeh(Executive Officer)inTodd Freedman(Executive Officer)inChris Hollindale(Head of Checkr Pay)in
Co-investorsAccelActivant CapitalBond Capital ManagementCoatue ManagementDCVC (Data Collective)Earl Grey Capital+22 more
Clubhouse is a social audio platform where users can join live voice conversations and discussions.
Social
Rohan Seth(Founder)inPaul Davison(Founder)
Co-investorsAndreessen HorowitzColor CapitalDream MachineDreamers VCGraph VenturesJames Beshara Fund+15 more
Cornami develops custom silicon and a full compute stack (hardware, system software, and workload mapping) to make Fully Homomorphic Encryption fast enough to run computation on encrypted data in production.
CybersecurityDeep TechSemiconductorsDallas, US
Walden Rhines(Executive Officer, Director)Craig Gentry(Chief Scientist)
BoardMichael Kim(Director)Jack Crawford(Director)inAlexander Fortmuller(Director)Gordon Campbell(Director)
Co-investorsAlpha Intelligence CapitalOctave Ventures LlcRaptor GroupSoftBank Vision FundImpact Venture CapitalSoftBank Group
d_model develops reinforcement learning environments that train AI agents to conduct interpretability and alignment research on frontier language models.
AI & Machine LearningDeep TechDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Daniel Moon(COO)inAnish Tondwalkar(Founder)inShawn Jain
Co-investorsHOF CapitalSoma CapitalTranspose Platform ManagementY CombinatorGeneral CatalystXTX Markets
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Dataminr provides AI-powered real-time event detection by synthesizing text, images, video, audio, and sensor signals across public data sources.
AI & Machine LearningCybersecurityData & InfrastructureEnterprise SoftwareGovTechImpact & Social GoodNew York, US
Ted Bailey(Founder)inPeter Bailey(Executive Officer)inDaniel O'Connor(Executive Officer)Nella Domenici(Executive Officer)inJeffrey Kinsey(Executive Officer)inJason Edelboim(Executive Officer)in
Co-investors1802 VenturesAdit Ventures Management, LlcAllied Venture PartnersAlpha Square GroupAlumni VenturesBlue Ivy Ventures+27 more
DevRev Computer is an AI teammate for operations teams that unifies data across tools and systems to track project progress, automate administrative tasks, and surface risks.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSales TechPalo Alto, US
Manoj Agarwal(Founder)inDheeraj Pandey(Founder)in
Co-investors2.12 AngelsAlumni VenturesAUDEO VENTURESBallistic VenturesKhosla Venturesm]x[v Capital+2 more
Groq designs and manufactures the LPU (Language Processing Unit), a chip purpose-built for AI inference, and operates GroqCloud, a platform for running inference workloads with low latency and cost efficiency across global data centers.
AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingSemiconductorsPalo Alto, US
Jonathan Ross(Founder)inDouglas Wightman(Founder)
BoardChamath Palihapitiya(Director)in
Co-investorsAccess Ventures (New York)Acequia Capital (AceCap)Alumni VenturesAxiom PartnersB CapitalBanca Investis — Family Office+77 more
Harness provides software delivery automation and infrastructure for engineering teams to deploy code reliably and efficiently.
AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Jyoti Bansal(Founder)inRishi Singh(Founder)in
Co-investorsAlkeon InnovationArtisanal VenturesBattery VenturesCollective LiquidityCrosslink CapitalEniac Ventures+19 more
Ironclad is an AI platform for digital contract management that helps companies execute faster deals, reduce contract surprises, and measure value.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareLegalTechSaaSSan Francisco, US
Jason Boehmig(CEO)inBrian Powers(Executive Officer)Cai GoGwilt(CTO)Jason Springer(Chief Executive Officer)Jeremy Smith(President)inVedavati Verma(Chief Technology Officer)
Co-investors500 GlobalAccelAmplo VenturesBetter Tomorrow VenturesBond Capital ManagementCowboy Ventures+34 more
Nile provides an enterprise network-as-a-service platform that delivers wired and wireless connectivity for offices and campuses.
AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingCybersecurityEnterprise SoftwareSaaS
Co-investors8VCGeodesic CapitalJC2 VenturesKoch Disruptive TechnologiesMarch Capital PartnersProsperity7 Ventures+4 more
Helium operates a decentralized wireless network where individuals and businesses host small devices called Hotspots to provide cellular connectivity and earn HNT cryptocurrency.
Crypto & Web3
Amir Haleem(Founder)Sean Carey(Founder)Shawn Fanning(Founder)Shishir Jakati(Founder)inZach Witzel(Founder)in
Co-investors10T Funda16z cryptoAlpha Square GroupAlumni VenturesAndreessen HorowitzBlueYard Capital+29 more
Observo provides AI-powered telemetry filtering for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, automatically identifying and reducing low-value logs to minimize data ingestion volume.
AI & Machine LearningCybersecurityEnterprise SoftwareSaaS
Ricky S. Arora(Founder)inGurjeet A.(Founder)inGurjeet Arora(Founder)Ricky Arora(Founder)
Co-investorsFelicis VenturesLightspeed Venture PartnersFlare Capital Partners
Positron builds purpose-built hardware and inference accelerator silicon for running Transformer-based generative AI models, offering inference appliances that map HuggingFace Transformers models onto the hardware and expose an OpenAI API-compliant endpoint.
AI & Machine LearningHardwareSemiconductorsLovelock, US
Thomas Sohmers(Founder)inBarrett Woodside(Founder)inEdward Kmett(Founder)inMitesh Agrawal(Executive Officer, Director)in
BoardRobert Reid(Director)
Co-investorsAloniqAsimov VenturesBanyan VenturesCaucasus VenturesCisco InvestmentsFlume Ventures+16 more
RapidDeploy, part of Motorola Solutions, provides Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911) software for public safety answering points (PSAPs), including emergency call handling, mapping, and analytics tools.
AI & Machine LearningGovTechSaaSAustin, US
Brett Meyerowitz(Director)inSteven Raucher(Executive Officer, Director)inReinhard Ekl(Executive Officer)
BoardRaymond J. Lane(Director)in
Co-investorsEdison PartnersGreatPoint VenturesMorpheus VenturesTau VenturesEricsson VenturesSamsung Next
ThoughtSpot builds data analytics and business intelligence software to make data accessible to organizations across industries.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSan Jose, US
Ajeet Singh(Co-founder and Executive Chairman)inAmit Prakash(Co-founder)inSudheesh Nair(Founder)inMohit Daswani(Executive Officer)inKetan Karkhanis(Chief Executive Officer)
BoardQuentin Clark(Director)in
Co-investorsBallistic VenturesEQUIAMGaingelsGeneral CatalystGeodesic CapitalKhosla Ventures+12 more
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Trust Machines develops applications built on the Bitcoin network to expand the utility and value of Bitcoin.
Crypto & Web3
Co-investorsDigital Currency GroupHivemind Capital PartnersRising Tide
Uniphore provides a Business AI Cloud platform that enables enterprises to build, deploy, and scale autonomous AI agents across operations with built-in governance, security, and sovereignty controls.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareSaaSPalo Alto, US
Ravi Saraogi(Founder)inUmesh Sachdev(Founder)inMegha Sharma(Executive Officer)inSandeep Pandit(Executive Officer)in
BoardRobert Rueckert(Director)inRanjith Menon(Director)
Co-investorsAvant LabsChiratae VenturesCisco InvestmentsCXO FundIAN GroupIron Pillar+12 more
WisdomAI offers an agentic AI analytics platform that builds and governs enterprise business context — metrics, definitions, permissions, and business logic — to deliver validated, accurate answers across chat, dashboards, agents, and embedded analytics.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Guilherme Menezes(Founder)inKapil Chhabra(Founder)inSoham Mazumdar(Founder)inSharvanath Pathak(Founder)in
Co-investorsCoatue ManagementGreatPoint VenturesGTM CapitalKleiner PerkinsMadrona Venture GroupNVIDIA+3 more
World provides a system for verifying that online users are real, unique humans, combining privacy-preserving proof-of-human identity with financial infrastructure and a digital token.
AI & Machine LearningCrypto & Web3FintechSector AgnosticSan Francisco, US
Sam Altman(Founder)Alex Blania(Founder)inMax Novendstern(Founder)inand Alex Bania(Founder)Alex Bania(Founder)
Co-investorsAndreessen HorowitzBain Capital CryptoBlockchain CapitalKhosla Ventures1confirmationa16z crypto+22 more
Other
Tracked investments with no reachable website or further public details — typically companies that wound down, renamed, or were absorbed.
Orb IntelligencePensando Systems
Exits · 6
4 IPOs · 2 acquisitions · showing 5NextdoorNYSE: NXDRPalantir Technologies Inc.NASDAQ: PLTRPinterestNYSE: PINSRubrikNYSE: RBRKPensando Systemsacq. by AMD
Portfolio news
latest coverage across their companiesIronclad · en.wikipedia.org · Sep 16, 2026
Positron AI · prnewswire.com · Sep 10, 2026
Groq Inc · groq.com · Jun 22, 2026
Checkr · cfodive.com · May 4, 2026
ThoughtSpot · trysignalbase.com · Mar 25, 2026
Uniphore · techcrunch.com · Jan 19, 2026
WisdomAI · thesaasnews.com · Nov 13, 2025
Frequently asked questions
- How many investments has U First Capital made?
- U First Capital has 25 tracked investments, 6 of which have exited, including 2 dated in the last 24 months.
- What sectors does U First Capital focus on?
- U First Capital focuses on AI & Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Deep Tech, E-commerce, IoT.
- Where is U First Capital located?
- U First Capital is headquartered in Silicon Valley, US.
- Does U First Capital lead rounds?
- U First Capital typically participates in rounds rather than leading them.
- Who does U First Capital co-invest with?
- U First Capital most often shares deals with Khosla Ventures, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners), EQUIAM, among 196 tracked co-investors.
Media · Podcasts & interviews
featuring the teamEp. 77 - What VCs are looking for today—with Sanjit Singh Dang, U First Capital
The SaaS Backwards Podcast · Sanjit Singh Dang
Ekta Dang from U First Capital interviews Nutanix co-Founder and DevRev CEO Dheeraj Pandey
sanjit66 · Ekta Dang
Channeling Capital for Strategic Innovation | Venture Capital | Sanjit Singh Dang | U First Capital
Asia Tech Journal · Sanjit Singh Dang
Images
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