is betting big on markets that don’t yet exist. In March, the 30-year-old venture firm closed a new $600 million fund to back technical founders at the earliest stages — often before there’s even a product — with a strategy built around what it calls “zero billion-dollar markets.”

Crunchbase News recently spoke with general partner , who says his firm’s conviction stems from its history of spotting inflection points early — from incubating AI chipmaker in 2016 to backing more than 100 AI startups over time.

Palo Alto, California-based Foundation looks for technical founders pushing into uncharted spaces where infrastructure and human needs intersect, often long before consensus forms. The idea: invest early, double down on breakout companies, and help them scale through the risky first million dollars in revenue.

Vassallo is an engineer by training with a strong design background. He said he believes the companies that differentiate themselves in the new AI age will be ones where humans matter.

“You really have to see the intersection of technology and humanity to navigate this moment,” he said. “It’s an appreciation for not just physics, but psychology. And where is it that humans will continue to matter?”

That’s especially true with AI reinforcement learning with human feedback, which keeps humans in the loop. “AI is getting smarter because humans are seeing where the gaps are,” Vassallo said. “And then we’re getting smarter in terms of how we interact with these tools.”

Vassallo joined Foundation 18 years ago. Before that, he applied his education in electromechanical engineering and robotics to product design, including an early-career stint in the 1990s at , building hardware and software systems that informed his interest in design and fast prototyping.

These days, his team at Foundation spends a lot of time thinking about “tools that engage the best of us, and are mindful of all the ways we can be hacked,” he said.

Investing early with high conviction

The rate at which AI is now advancing feels different from past technology cycles, Vassallo said. “We’re at a moment right now that feels like nothing else that I’ve experienced in north of 30 years.”

Foundations’ investment approach is not consensus driven. Rather, it looks for “zero billion-dollar markets” — markets that do not yet exist, until a founder steps into the breach and creates the product.

“The thing that animates so many of the investments that we do here at Foundation — you’re projecting your view of where the markets could go if this thing were to exist,” Vassallo said.

The firm’s partners lean on their “nerdy side” and keep track of contributions, as well as the people who are building compelling open-source projects inside large companies that could get spun out.

The firm tends to invest very early, with high conviction, and in very technical founders, Vassallo said. It then aims to help them from their earliest days scale to their first million dollars in revenue, he said.

Across its portfolio, 80% of its investments are in pre-revenue companies —��often pre-product and sometimes pre-inception.

New computing infrastructure

Foundation incubated AI chip startup Cerebras and co-led its Series A in 2016 with and . For context, was worth less than $25 billion at the time of Foundation’s Cerebras investment. Today, the semiconductor giant is worth $4 trillion, and Cerebras itself has signaled plans to go public.

Vassallo met Cerebras co-founder in 2009 when the latter was working on data-center power efficiency. Vassallo did not invest then, but the two stayed in touch.

“Investing in semiconductors in the mid-2010s was a recipe for losing a lot of money,” Vassallo said.

But when Feldman’s prior company, , was purchased by in 2012, and after Feldman left, the two mulled for a few years about what might be next.

“What you could see is you would need to build a different approach around optimizing intelligence per unit of energy,” said Vassallo. How do you build something that is “not only faster, and more performant, but also going to be much more energy efficient?”

Founded in 2016, Cerebras set out to build a new computing infrastructure, challenging some of the assumptions of six decades of semiconductor physics, he said. Cerebras built a fundamentally different architecture with wafer scale semiconductors, optimized for data movement, rather than compute.

“AI workloads between 2012 and 2016 had already grown by north of 300,000x,” said Vassallo, which gave him conviction to invest.

“We have been able to assemble an extraordinary team around a very different architecture. What we’re building is not something that others are focused on,” he said.

100+ AI investments

Foundation has made more than 100 investments in AI in infrastructure, data infrastructure, developer tools, security and applications. The firm has not, however, invested in frontier model labs.

Foundation first invested in AI around 2008 and 2009 in statistical inference over large data sets used by companies in advertising such as . This technology was also leveraged for spam filtering and cybersecurity and in e-commerce.

, a general partner at Foundation, led the seed round in 2021 for , an app that assists with writing built on top of ’s GPT-3. Jasper had to pivot to a marketing enterprise solution when GPT-3.5 launched in November 2022 with its own consumer chatbot, which reached users in just two months.

The firm also led the seed round in 2023 for , a company automating authorization healthcare workflows from often convoluted and paper-based processes.

In the coding sector, , a general partner, led the firm’s Series A funding in July 2025 in . The company’s CodeSim product predicts software behavior and failures and debugs AI-written code before it is deployed, a potentially massive market when you consider recent estimates that ‘ code is written by artificial intelligence.

“Code is such a good application of large language models, because there is actually a way to close the loop and determine whether you have something that works better or not,” Vassallo said.

The firm typically invests between $15 million and $20 million per company, a sum designed to carry a startup through its Series A and B rounds. It has a separate leadership fund for companies that break out.

Along with investing up and down the AI stack, Foundation also invests in crypto and the “tech” part of fintech. The firm is led by four general partners: Vassallo, Chen, Garg and .

Vassallo focuses on infrastructure and “AI intersected with something else,” as well as its crypto practice. He anticipates that infrastructure will precede applications in AI, like other investment cycles.

Overall, he predicts explosive application growth in AI, but notes it will require more nuanced investment analysis.

“We love working with founders who are living right at that edge,” he said.

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• The IPO Market Is Opening Up. These 14 Companies Could Be Next.
• GV Bets Big On ‘AI Magic’ — Even When It Competes With Alphabet
• Where Active AI Investor Felicis Is Placing Its Bets
• Battery Ventures Sees AI’s Massive Impact On Tech, And It’s Here Already

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For years, startup founders have treated venture capital like a rite of passage — raise a round, land some splashy headlines, grow fast or die trying. But that playbook is worn out. And it doesn’t work for every company.

The VC model was built to swing for the fences. Which is fine — if you’re building the next . But if you’re building a real business with real customers and real economics, you may find yourself trapped in a system that demands moonshots and punishes discipline.

Here’s the hard truth: most founders don’t need VCs. At least, not out of the gate. In many cases, it’s smarter to go straight to the source — limited partners, family offices, high-net-worth individuals. Skip the middleman. Source the capital. Keep your company.

Here are three reasons to consider this route.

VCs and founders are playing different games

Venture capital runs on a timer. Most funds have seven- to 10-year life cycles. That means VCs need you to exit at a specific time — whether or not it’s the right move for your company. Their incentives are tied to the fund, and , not to your timeline.

This can create a misalignment. You might want to build something durable. They want to 10x their money. That’s not inherently bad — but if you’re not aware of it, you’ll end up chasing someone else’s goals with your company.

Worse, big exits often don’t help founders as much as you think. If you’ve raised multiple rounds at ballooning valuations, even a $100 million exit can leave you with table scraps. Meanwhile, the VCs pull out a solid return and move on.

And let’s be honest: many VCs . They earn fees whether your company wins or dies. You don’t.

LPs, on the other hand — the pension funds, family offices, and wealthy individuals who actually provide the money — . When you go straight to them, you’re dealing with people who don’t need a return on a timeline. They’re happy with real value over time.

Too much money too soon might kill you

Everyone wants to raise a big round. It feels like momentum. But overcapitalization is a silent killer. It drives up burn. It forces you to hire too fast. It pushes you into fake growth before you’ve nailed product-market fit.

I’ve seen it happen: smart founders raise $10 million and suddenly feel pressure to act like a $100 million company. They start building teams for scale before they’ve built something people want. That pressure often comes from the boardroom. They .

If you raise from aligned angels or LPs, you raise what you need. Not what makes a headline.

That’s a better way to build. Lean. Focused. Controlled. When you grow on your own terms, you don’t need the startup hype cycle to validate your worth. Your customers will do that for you.

The past few years proved this. When the market tightened in 2022–2024, the companies that survived weren’t the ones who raised the most — they were the ones who ran tight, found traction and didn’t get addicted to outside capital.

Autonomy is everything

The second you take venture money, your company starts to become a group project. You’ll have new voices in the room, some helpful, some not. And you might still be running the company — but you’re no longer owning it.

Control is more than a board vote. It’s the ability to say no. To take your time. To build the thing you actually believe in.

. No VC money. Sold for $12 billion. Founders owned the whole thing. That’s an edge case, sure — but it proves what’s possible when you own your path.

Not every founder wants to blitzscale or IPO. Some want to build a profitable $50 million company that lasts. Some want to exit early and clean. Others want to go the distance. VCs often support one outcome: swing for the fences, or bust. LPs and direct investors? They’re often more flexible.

And let’s not forget: many angels and LPs are . They’ve been in the trenches and might actually have the time — and wisdom — to help you.

Venture capital isn’t evil by any means. It has its place. But it’s a tool — not a requirement. And not all tools are right for all jobs. So if you’re a founder thinking about your next raise, ask yourself: Do I need venture capital, or do I just want the status that comes with it? Can I build the next milestone with less money and more control? Who do I want sitting across the table from me when things get hard?

You may be shocked at what you can do with the right capital partners — especially when they’re not racing to flip your company on someone else’s schedule.

Skip the VC meeting. Call some LPs directly. You might just like the conversation better.

is the co-founder and CEO of , a Dallas-based peer-to-peer EV sharing platform founded in 2021. Originally from London, Sher bootstrapped Zevo and later raised capital from a small group of high-net-worth individuals to build a 100% electric, contactless rental experience. His work focuses on making EVs more accessible, monetizable and usable for everyday drivers.

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The Menlo Park-based firm — known as an early backer of such startups as , and ��— announced its $580 million Mayfield XVII and the $375 million Mayfield Select III funds.

The firm last announced new funds in March 2020, when it raised $750 million across two funds. The firm now has $3 billion in total assets under management.

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The Mayfield XVII fund will primarily be used for early-stage investing — mainly seed and Series A rounds. The Mayfield Select III will be for follow-on rounds, as well as investments in new companies, primarily at the Series B stage.

Some themes the firm is looking to invest in include human-centered AI, the developer-first technologies, semiconductors, cybersecurity and more.

“We are grateful for the continued support of our limited partners and for the fortitude of entrepreneurs which brings us to work every day,” said Managing Partner in a statement. “We believe that the current economic uncertainty presents an opportunity for the bold and a time to lean forward into the next era of innovation. We are excited about partnering with inception and early-stage founders looking for a people-first investor to build a bright future together.”

Recent dealmaking

While some big-name firms such as , and many more significantly slowed their investment pace last year, Mayfield continued a deliberate and consistent cadence.

According to Crunchbase data, the firm completed 26 financing deals in the salad days of 2021, and 23 last year — when the venture and investing market was substantially easing.

So far this year, Mayfield’s pace has been a little slower, with just five deals announced. That includes��a $51 million Series E for San Francisco-based database developer .

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Although a lot of attention has been paid to huge funding rounds at the later stage – in particular, the recent spate of mega-rounds led by SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund – outsized rounds abound at all stages. Crunchbase News has also explored some of the smallest funding rounds startups raise. But up to this point, we haven’t taken a look at big rounds at early stages. And this is a somewhat glaring omission because seed and early-stage funding rounds make up the surpassing majority of deal volume around the world.

If you’ll forgive the pun, it’s kind of a big deal.

Today, we’re going to take a look at this growing phenomenon, what it means, and what might be happening “under the hood” in supergiant seed rounds.

The Rise And Rise Of Supergiant Rounds

In this section, we’re going to zip through a fairly large amount of funding data rather quickly. The exact numbers are less important than the overall trends they indicate. To wit, that both middle-of-the-road rounds and their supergiant counterparts alike have grown significantly in size over the past decade.

But before showing the charts and analyzing the data behind them, allow us a second to explain what, exactly, we’re talking about when we talk about supergiant rounds.

For our purposes here, we’ve borrowed the term “supergiant” from astronomy. , as the name may suggest, are some of the most massive and luminous celestial bodies in the universe. Similarly, the supergiant funding rounds we’re examining here are among the largest raised by startups, and they’re the rounds that grab the most headlines.

Hunting For Giants

We define the set of “supergiant” rounds as the top ten percent of deals struck for each round type, by year. So, for example, if there were 5,000 Seed rounds closed in a given year, the “supergiants” would be the top 500 seed rounds – ranked by the amount of money raised – for that year. Likewise, if there were 1,500 Series A rounds closed in that same year, we’d call the 150 largest Series A rounds supergiants as well.

The following analysis is based on a dataset of . We’ll compare the average size of supergiant rounds against a of round sizes, which doesn’t include the top or bottom ten percent of rounds.

Why go with a trimmed average? We want to exclude the supergiant rounds because they’d artificially skew the general average upward, but by the same token we want to filter out the smallest rounds (, for example) that would artificially skew figures lower. To reiterate, by comparing an average of the median eighty percent rounds to the average of the top ten percent of rounds, we’ll be able to see how supergiant round sizes related to those “in the middle of the road” over the past decade.

Our primary focus here will be deals from the earliest stages – Seed and Angel, Series A, and Series B – but we’ll get into some findings from later stages too. Let’s start with the earliest rounds and move later from there. And once we’ve shown the data, we’ll share some observations gleaned from it.

Seed And Angel Rounds

For , we found both that the size of both middle-of-the-road and supergiant rounds have grown significantly over the past decade, as the chart below shows.

The size of middle-of-the-road Seed and Angel rounds grew by roughly 145 percent over the course of the last ten years, and supergiant rounds are just under 63 percent larger than the supergiant average from a decade ago.

And – in what will become a common refrain – the companies that raised these large rounds are primarily located in just a few cities.

A majority of supergiant Seed and Angel rounds were raised by startups based in the SF Bay Area and New York City. Let’s see if the same pattern occurs at Series A.

Series A Rounds

Like with seed and angel rounds, the chart below aggregates data from and shows how much Series A rounds have grown over the past decade.

The size of supergiant Series A rounds grew by a similar amount to middle-of-the-road Seed and Angel deals, increasing by 140 percent over the course of the last ten years. More pedestrian Series A rounds are just under 130 percent larger, up from a trimmed average of $4.93 million in 2008 to $11.29 million in 2018, year to date.

The distribution of startups raising supergiant Series A rounds is similar to even earlier-stage counterparts.

Again, a majority of supergiant Series A rounds are raised by startups headquartered in just a few cities. In addition to San Francisco and New York City, life-sciences heavy Boston takes second place in the ranking of a decade’s worth of huge Series A rounds.

Last but not least, it’s on to Series B.

Series B Rounds

Our Series B dataset contained , but unlike earlier rounds the general “up and to the right” trendline isn’t so clear. As the chart below shows, it appears as though the size of Series B rounds has somewhat leveled off, at least on an annual timescale.

Supergiant Series B rounds have grown by 65 percent over the last decade. The more middle-of-the-road Series B round has also grown, but by a more significant 83 percent since 2008.

The geographic distribution of startups that raised the most supergiant Series B rounds is strikingly similar to the population of Series A fundraisers.

Again, San Francisco and the broader Bay Area ranks at the top of the charts, followed by Boston, NYC, Los Angeles, and San Diego – the same rank order as the prior round type.

And now that we’ve got the raw data out there, let’s see what we can take away from all of this.

The Pie Shrinks As The Middle Grows

Higher Growth Rates Amongst Middle-Of-The-Road Rounds

Although the growing size of supergiant rounds may be impressive due to sheer size alone, it’s actually middle-of-the-road rounds that have grown the most consistently over the past decade.

In two of the three round types we reviewed above, the compound annual growth rate (or CAGR, for those of you who like acronyms) of supergiants underperformed more quotidian rounds, as the table below shows.

This all suggests that despite supergiant rounds getting all the attention, performance in more middle-of-the-road rounds has been even better, at least from a dollars-raised standpoint.

Growing Geographic Concentration Of Supergiant Rounds

By definition, supergiant rounds suck up a lot of capital, and they seem to be primarily located in just a few deep pools. As the funding cycle progresses, it appears as though more of the supergiant rounds are raised in just a handful of cities.

As the funding cycle progresses, the percentage of rounds raised by startups located in the top three cities seems to increase after an initial drop following Seed. 55 percent of supergiant A rounds were raised by startups from the Bay Area, NYC, and Los Angeles. Although not pictured above, 67 percent of supergiant Series C deals were struck by companies from the Bay Area, Boston, and New York City.

But what’s even more striking is the declining percentage share of supergiant rounds raised by startups outside the top-five rankings for a particular stage.

The chart above shows that the ability to close very large rounds is generally concentrated in fewer and fewer places as the funding cycle progresses.

We stopped our analysis at Series D due to limited sample size.

The Growing Dominance Of Supergiant Rounds

Some have shown that it’s not just the average round size that’s growing across most stages over time, but the number of large outlier rounds as well. For example, , a venture investor at , that the proportion of Series A deals larger than $50 million grew by an astonishing 721 percent from 2008 to 2017. The share of Series B rounds in the $50 million-plus range grew three hundred percent over the same period. He concluded that “venture is being increasingly driven by large rounds.”

Inspired by Levine’s research, , an economist, and strategy advisor, that between 2007 and 2017, deal volume has declined while dollar volume rose across almost all stages of funding he analyzed. This is in line with analysis from Crunchbase News from late 2017. And in , he charted the growing number of large rounds over that time period.

Indeed, it was Levine and Hathaway’s analysis that prompted us to look at the numbers as well, albeit from a slightly different angle, one more focused on geography and population-scale shifts in round size at the highest end of the spectrum. Our findings confirm a piece of common sense: expensive cities (see: NYC and the Bay Area) or and those home to capital-intensive industries like biotechnology and advanced manufacturing (see: Boston and San Diego) are the primary drivers and beneficiaries of the trend toward supergiant rounds

A decade’s worth of history suggests that this is one status quo that won’t be disrupted soon, no matter how much “disruptive” startups may raise in the future.