Vermilion Cliffs Ventures
Venture capitalActively deployingNew York · Pre-Seed–Seed · 2 people tracked
Find your way into Vermilion Cliffs Ventures
356 people in our graph share verified history with the Vermilion Cliffs Ventures team — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.
Investment thesis
Vermilion Cliffs Ventures invests early in technical founders who are rebuilding the development stack for the agent era. Operator-founded and led by investors with hands-on go-to-market and product-led growth experience at leading developer companies, the fund backs early-stage, category-defining products in AI infrastructure, security, and developer tools. Beyond capital, Vermilion offers practical, founder-first support to help builders scale from the earliest days of their business.
Source: firm website, verified Aug 3, 2026.
Team · 2 people
from the firm's website
What they invest in
from 27 of 31 portfolio companiesAI & Machine Learning ×21Developer Tools ×21Enterprise Software ×11SaaS ×10Data & Infrastructure ×6Cloud Computing ×4Cybersecurity ×3Deep Tech ×3
HQs:United States×13Germany×1
Who they back
founder profiles across 16 portfolio companiesFounding team size:solo founder×32 founders×73 founders×34+ founders×3
Where their founders studiedfrom 26 founders with education data
The Wharton School ×3Carnegie Mellon University ×2Columbia University ×2Illinois Institute of Technology ×2Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management ×2Tel Aviv University ×2University of Pennsylvania ×2University of Southern California ×2
What their founders studiedfrom 25 founders with field-of-study data
Computer Science ×13Engineering ×6Business & Management ×2Mathematics & Statistics ×2Physics ×2
Where their founders worked beforefrom 27 founders with career history
Carnegie Mellon University ×4Amplitude ×2Apple ×2Facebook ×2LavaLab ×2Neo ×2Nike ×2Reforge ×2
Accelerator rootsportfolio companies that came through a program
1 founders hold a PhD · 4 hold an MBA (of 29 with degree data)
Investments · 31 tracked
founders shown can be your intro pathBy year:2025 · 52024 · 12023 · 28 dated
Cognee provides a memory layer API for AI agents that enables fast ingestion, retrieval, and persistent storage of agent execution history.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsBerlin, DE
Vasilije Markovic(CEO & Founder)
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Argilla develops open-source, data-centric software for building and improving AI and NLP models, with a focus on human feedback and data quality.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsCarpesa, Valencia
Francisco de Asis Aranda Montes(Executive Officer, Director)Daniel Vila Suero(Executive Officer, Director, Promoter)inDaniel Vila(CEO)inPaco Aranda(CTO)inJames Alcorn(Director)inPaco Nathan(Director)
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsAbstraction CapitalCriteria Venture TechEniac VenturesSAV (Scale Asia Ventures)Zetta Venture Partners
Atomic is a distributed, agent-native alternative to Git that manages source code at the primitive level, adding semantic call graphs, code search, intents, attestations, and provenance through a single CLI.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsSaaS
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsMadrona Venture GroupSlow Ventures
Boston, US
Guy Eisenkot(Founder)
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsDisruptive AIFusion VCAFG Partners
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Catio (Archie AI) provides an "Architecture IDE" that turns business goals and constraints into system-aligned architecture decisions, plans, and execution-ready specs, grounded in a team's live system.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwarePalo Alto, US
Boris Bogatin(Co-Founder & CEO)inToufic Boubez(Co-Founder and CTO)inVictor Kazakov(Co-founding Lead Engineer (Founding Engineer))inIman Makaremi(Co-founding Lead of AI)inAmit Saurav(Co-founding Lead Engineer)in
BoardRaju Rishi(Director)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsEniac VenturesLudlow VenturesPender VenturesRRE VenturesRTP GlobalSilicon Badia
Clarify builds a modern CRM platform that consolidates customer data from multiple sources, automates workflows, and provides insights to drive business growth.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSales TechDover, US
Patrick Thompson(Co-Founder / CEO)inOndrej Hrebicek(Co-Founder / CTO)inAustin Hay(Executive Officer, Director)inPranav Priyush(CEO)
BoardMatt Garratt(Director)inZachary Bratun-Glennon(Director)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsAscend Venture CapitalFikaGradient VenturesInvariantes FundMadrona Venture GroupRecall Capital+5 more
Colimit offers a coding agent for formal spec-driven development, guiding users to write formal specifications without prior experience, check specs for logical bugs, and generate code by combining compilers with LLMs.
AI & Machine LearningDeep TechDeveloper ToolsBrooklyn, US
Larry Wayne Diehl, Jr.(Executive Officer, Director)
BoardJesse Robbins(Director)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsHeavybit
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Confident Security provides a privacy-focused inference API and SDK for running AI models on confidential data, using confidential computing and an architecture based on the source-available OpenPCC (modeled on Apple's Private Cloud Compute).
AI & Machine LearningCybersecurityEnterprise Software
Jonathan Mortensen, PhD(Founder)in
Co-investorsEx/AnteJanuary CapitalLiquid VenturesRebel FundY Combinator
Confident AI is a platform for evaluating, monitoring, and governing AI systems in production.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Jeffrey Ip(CEO & Cofounder)inKritin Vongthongsri(Co-Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsY CombinatorJanuary CapitalLiquid VenturesRebel Fund
East River Source Control builds source control and code management tooling focused on code review and tracking how a codebase evolves, positioning source control as infrastructure for developers.
Developer ToolsSaaS
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Fiveonefour builds tooling focused on agent experience (AX), helping developers ship software that AI agents can use effectively.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsSaaSPortland, US
Timote Gelinas Delisle(Executive Officer, Director, Promoter)Chris Crane(Founder)inNicolas Joseph(Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsFlybridge Capital Partners6 Dimensions CapitalDimension CapitalRidge VenturesStage 2 Capital
Formal Technology is building a new computing stack aimed at elastic, isolated, and globally available serverless execution, using formal verification and compilers.
Cloud ComputingDeep TechDeveloper Tools
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Freeplay provides a platform for software product development teams to build and maintain generative AI products using best practices in experimentation, iteration, and data management.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsNext Frontier CapitalPreston-Werner VenturesRenegade Partners
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GenSX is a TypeScript framework and serverless platform for building AI agents and workflows using plain functions, with built-in infrastructure, observability, and tracing.
AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingDeveloper Tools
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsAmplify Partners
Osmosis is a reinforcement fine-tuning platform that provides reinforcement learning infrastructure to help developers build and deploy AI agents that improve from experience.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise Software
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsMatteo Franceschetti
Hyper provides AI-generated meeting summaries that turn long discussions into concise recaps highlighting key decisions and open questions, including AI transcription of calls.
AI & Machine LearningFuture of WorkSaaS
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsEniac VenturesVSC VenturesGreatPoint VenturesK5 GlobalRipple VenturesTusk Venture Partners
Keycard provides identity and access control for AI agents, enforcing policies on agent tool and API access while issuing short-lived, task-scoped credentials.
AI & Machine LearningCybersecurityDeveloper Tools
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsModern TechnicalTapestry VCAcrew CapitalAndreessen Horowitzboldstart venturesEssence Venture Capital
Lemma provides production monitoring and observability for AI agents, surfacing failures, aggregating issues, and enabling quick resolution through integrated alerts and context-sharing tools.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Jerry Zhang(Founder)inCole Gawin(Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsY CombinatorGreycroftHomebrewIndex Ventures
Mach9 builds automated feature-extraction software for transportation, telecom, and construction industries, enabling rapid extraction and mapping of large-scale infrastructure projects.
AI & Machine LearningConstruction TechData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSan Francisco, US
Alexander Baikovitz(Founder)inHaowen Shi(Founder)inMichael Mong(Cofounder)Zachary Sussman(Cofounder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsY CombinatorQuiet Capital
Number Zero is an open R&D organization building software for efficient distributed systems, including iroh, a toolkit for building distributed applications.
Data & InfrastructureDeep TechDeveloper ToolsBrooklyn, US
Brendan O'Brien(Executive Officer, Director, Promoter)
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsEx/Ante
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsVela PartnersEssence Venture Capital
Red Barn Robotics develops autonomous weeding robots for farms to eliminate intra-row weeds without human intervention, reducing labor costs and protecting soil health.
Advanced ManufacturingAgTechHardwareRoboticsSeattle, US
Adam Iseman(Founder)inIlya Kelner(Founder)inAlex Neff(Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsRegion CuatroY Combinator
Sequin is an open-source Postgres change data capture tool, distributed as a Docker container, that streams database changes in real time to destinations like Kafka, Redis, SQS, GCP Pub/Sub, Elasticsearch, and webhooks with exactly-once processing and strict ordering.
Cloud ComputingData & InfrastructureDeveloper Tools
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsParadigm
Staris provides automated penetration testing and vulnerability validation for security consultants and partners, delivering proof-of-exploit findings with PR-ready patches rather than unverified scanner output.
AI & Machine LearningCybersecurityDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareSaaSSeattle, US
Adam Cecchetti(CEO / Co-founder)inAustin Fath(CTO / Co-founder)inJohn Austin Talanda Fath(Executive Officer, Director)Daniel Herrera(CISO)Steve Curtis(Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Advisor)in
BoardMaria Palma(Director)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
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(Co-founder & CEO)inDaniel Worku(Co-founder & CTO)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsY CombinatorOutset CapitalTranspose Platform Management
Sutro provides a backend infrastructure platform that enables developers to define and deploy production-grade backends through a domain-specific language called SLang.
Cloud ComputingDeveloper Tools
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Tadata is an AI agent platform that integrates into Slack to automate research and repetitive work by connecting to business tools like CRM, marketing, and ops systems.
AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareSaaS
Tori Seidenstein(Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsGreatPoint VenturesRackhouse Venture Management Lp
CopilotKit provides an open-source framework and protocol (AG-UI) for developers to build and embed AI agents with rich, interactive user interfaces directly into applications, including web, Slack, and Teams.
AI & Machine LearningDeveloper ToolsSaaSIssaquah, US
Atai Barkai(CEO)inUli Barkai(Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investors97212 VenturesAbstraction CapitalDeep Acrefresh.fundGlilot Capital PartnersGurtin Ventures+2 more
Tillion offers an AI tool that answers questions across large sets of documents, providing responses linked to their source material.
AI & Machine LearningFintechLegalTechSaaS
Lior Romano(Founder)inBarak Naveh(Founder)in
PartnerAshley Smith· solo GP
Co-investorsKindred CapitalUpWestSelah Ventures
Other
Tracked investments with no reachable website or further public details — typically companies that wound down, renamed, or were absorbed.
<UNKNOWN>
Exits · 1
1 acquisitions<UNKNOWN>acq. by Hugging Face
Portfolio news
latest coverage across their companiesSutro · marketbeat.com · Aug 18, 2026
Confident · prospect-us.co.uk · Aug 18, 2026
Atomic · thesaasnews.com · Aug 7, 2026
Gulp · morningstar.com · Aug 4, 2026
Clarify AI · geekwire.com · Jul 21, 2026
StarSling · ycombinator.com · Jun 29, 2026
Fiveonefour · 7wdata.be · Jun 15, 2026
Sequin · themenopausecharity.org · May 18, 2026
Frequently asked questions
- How many investments has Vermilion Cliffs Ventures made?
- Vermilion Cliffs Ventures has 31 tracked investments, 1 of which have exited, including 5 dated in the last 24 months.
- What stage does Vermilion Cliffs Ventures invest at?
- Vermilion Cliffs Ventures invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed stages.
- What is Vermilion Cliffs Ventures's typical check size?
- Vermilion Cliffs Ventures typically writes checks of $200K – $500K.
- What sectors does Vermilion Cliffs Ventures focus on?
- Vermilion Cliffs Ventures focuses on AI & Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Data & Infrastructure, Developer Tools.
- Where is Vermilion Cliffs Ventures located?
- Vermilion Cliffs Ventures is headquartered in New York, US.
- Who does Vermilion Cliffs Ventures co-invest with?
- Vermilion Cliffs Ventures most often shares deals with Y Combinator, Abstraction Capital, Eniac Ventures, among 38 tracked co-investors.
Media · Podcasts & interviews
featuring the team#29 Ashley Smith, GP & Founder, Vermilion Cliffs Ventures
Zight · Ashley Smith
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