M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund

The data center revolution is here. 🚀 Traditional #datacenters can't handle AI's explosive demands—today's breakthrough models need hundreds of thousands of processing elements connected across kilometer-length links, essentially turning entire facilities into single machines. The bottleneck? Copper-based networking. At M12, that’s why we're backing pioneers like nEye.ai who are transforming the #AIinfrastructure with future-proof optical switches Read our full Systems Thesis on why #opticalnetworking is the key to unlocking AI's future potential. 👇 https://lnkd.in/dt-qipj8 

Cracking the Enterprise Code in AI Selling into the enterprise—beyond pilot engagements—is still the gold standard for AI startups. At M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, we regularly calibrate what “go-to-market maturity” really looks like by listening to enterprise customers who are actively testing AI solutions across internal and external applications. We brought together leaders from Barclays and six of our portfolio companies pushing the boundaries of AI data and infrastructure: 🔹 Arcee AI Lucas Atkins 🔹 Arize AI Jason Lopatecki 🔹 HiddenLayer – Malcolm Harkins 🔹 Fastino – George Hurn-Maloney 🔹 SynthLabs – Nathan Lile 🔹 DatologyAI – Ari Morcos What we learned: ✅ The bar is high for new SaaS vendors selling into financial and regulated industries. ✅ Marketplaces like Azure can streamline procurement and onboarding. ✅ Security must be embedded at every data touchpoint. ✅Transparent model overhead—context length, GPU-free compatibility, observability, and task-specific performance—matters more than ever. Huge thanks to Torstein Berteig, Yusuf Kazi, and Dimitrios Emmanoulopoulos from Barclays for their invaluable insights—and to Michael Stewart and James Wu for leading this M12 founder session. We’re proud to help catalyze this ecosystem and support the next generation of enterprise-ready AI.

🚨The newest M12 Founders Feature is officially live! 🚨 This month, we spoke with Ben Kliger at Zenity to learn about how Zenity got its start, its evolution over time as AI becomes more ubiquitous, and his vision for the company’s future. "This partnership [with M12] has not only supported our growth from an investment and sales perspective, but also enriched our understanding and capabilities across all areas of the business." We're proud to be part of this journey with you, Ben! Read the full conversation. https://lnkd.in/eQDuaVQj

Come join the incredible M12 team and help the next generation of tech leaders thrive! 🌟

The importance of bringing AI to the very edge is something that Armada knows all too well. 💡

M12 Managing Partner Michael Stewart had the privilege of moderating not one, but TWO high-impact panels with some of the most forward-thinking voices in the AI ecosystem during VentureBeat Transform. 💡 In the first panel, “AI Inference is Reshaping Enterprise AI Economics – Here's How to Respond,” Michael was joined by Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis), Sean Lie (Cerebras Systems), and Jonathan Ross (Groq) where they discussed: 🔹 The “AI Factory” metaphor (popularized by NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang) 🔹 How today’s bottleneck isn’t demand—it’s infrastructure capacity, and enterprises are writing checks for guaranteed access. 🔹 How we’re still in early price discovery. Value creation is outpacing cost control, and premium pricing follows differentiation. In the second panel, “Cracking AI’s Storage Bottleneck,” Michael spoke with Greg Matson (Solidigm) and Roger Cummings (PEAK:AIO) about: 🔹 How data gravity remains a central challenge for enterprises seeking scalable, simplified, and affordable storage infrastructure. 🔹The market is currently divided largely into two camps: 1) High-capacity solid-state storage for edge AI scenarios and 2) High-performance storage for training and inference workloads Thank you, VentureBeat, for including us in these important conversations where we can continue to support the builders who are redefining what's possible at the infrastructure layer of AI.

What’s the true cost of AI at scale — and how should enterprises respond? Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis), Sean Lie (Cerebras Systems), Jonathan Ross (Groq), and Michael Stewart (M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund) are unpacking the new economics of AI inference: custom silicon, hyperscaler dynamics, tokenomics, and the global hardware race. From ultra-low latency to geopolitical tensions, this conversation is essential for leaders building the next generation of scalable AI systems. #venturebeat #agenticAI #transform2025

AI’s next big bottleneck? Storage. Greg Matson (Solidigm) and Roger Cummings (PEAK:AIO) and moderator Michael Stewart (M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund) are diving into how modern, high-capacity storage architectures are unlocking AI performance across industries — from healthcare to fraud detection to wildlife conservation. With insights from MONAI (Medical Open Network for AI) and beyond, this session explores how to keep up with the data demands of advanced AI workloads — from training clusters to edge inference. #venturebeat #agenticAI

Congratulations to Eventual on their $30M Seed and Series A funding! 🎉 We're proud to participate in this funding round alongside CRV, Felicis, Y Combinator, and Citi. Eventual is redefining data infrastructure for AI by enabling seamless processing of multimodal data—images, video, and documents—at scale. Their open-source engine, Daft, is already delivering impressive results. As AI continues to evolve, the need for robust data infrastructure becomes paramount. We're excited to see where Eventual goes as they build the foundation for the next generation of AI applications. Congratulations to Sammy Sidhu, Jay Chia, and the entire Eventual team on this significant milestone!

📣🚨The #GCVPowerlist2025 is here! And it's not just a list of names — it is a guide to different #CVC models. For the last decade, we have been recognising the most inspiring leaders in the #CVC industry through our renowned annual #Powerlist, which is compiled through community nominations and rigorous research by our selection committee around community engagement, deal activity and innovative approaches to venturing. Not only are we celebrating these leaders in #corporateventuring, we're exploring key insights into what exactly makes them so successful. Congratulations from the entire GCV team to those featured! We can’t wait to celebrate with you at the #GCVSymposium 🎉 See the entire list here: https://lnkd.in/erXXND36