GFT Ventures Q4 Update
Welcome to the inaugural edition of our GFT Ventures (Global Frontier Technology Ventures) quarterly newsletter! We hope you will benefit from our fund updates and portfolio company highlights, as well as our overall industry observations and thought leadership exchanges. Please feel free to share our newsletter with your colleagues and friends using the “Share” button at the bottom of this post. Any additional questions or comments may be directed to team@gft.vc. And you can always visit our GFT Ventures website to learn more about us.
Celebrating the Launch of GFT Ventures – A Note from Our Founders
Jay Eum and I recently launched GFT Ventures with the goal of establishing the premier, blue-chip, early-stage technology venture capital firm focused on Artificial Intelligence and other frontier technology investment opportunities. The rise of modern AI techniques will likely represent the biggest technology inflection point most of us will ever see in our lifetimes. One investment analyst is even calling it “the mother of all cycles”. As a result, we’re focusing our inaugural $100M fund squarely on opportunities leveraging AI, as well as related opportunities in data science, robotics and automation, blockchain/fintech and digital health.
The GFT Ventures “sweet spot” is early-stage companies (Series Seed/A) solving the hardest problems for the largest markets. And we like to lean in heavily when we find the best and most proven management teams. Our first three closed investments have clearly originated from what we’d like to think of as our “proprietary deal flow”, gained from years of investment and ecosystem development experience in our focus areas. And more good news, and additional great investments, are coming soon.
GFT Ventures recently completed our second closing, and we are pleased to report that we’ve now raised the majority of our first $100M target fund – a major milestone to be sure. That being said, we’re still accepting new LPs for the current fund, and we are always interested in talking to potential investors (or co-investors) for future funds as well. The quality of the deal flow we are seeing is so tremendous, it is indeed sparking our desire to grow and expand our GFT franchise as aggressively and logically as possible.
Jay and I have been friends and co-investors for two decades, and are thrilled to now realize our collective passion through the formation of GFT Ventures. Many have asked me “why I on earth would leave my 20-year executive BD position at Nvidia to start this new fund”. The answer is simple – the opportunities ahead of us in AI and other frontier technology areas are massive. But even more importantly, I couldn’t imagine a person other than Jay that I would want to partner with along this fantastic journey.
On behalf of the entire GFT Ventures team, I’d like to personally thank all of our institutional, corporate and individual limited partners for your support and trust in us. We could not be more excited and passionate about the opportunities ahead for GFT Ventures, and we’re already off to an amazing start. We will not let you down.
Sincerely,
Jeff Herbst and Jay Eum
Founding Managing Partners, GFT Ventures
Featured Portfolio Companies
GFT Ventures led Mperativ's Series A round
What it does:
Mperativ provides a first-of-its-kind, AI-powered revenue marketing platform delivered via a Saas model. The company’s time-series-based solution enables marketing stakeholders (ie. CMOs, CROs, CFOs) to visualize the end-to-end revenue supply chain, analyze revenue/marketing insights from any angle, and apply AI predictive analytics to determine marketing outcomes. Co-investors include Westwave and Heroic.
Why we found it exciting:
The global marketing tech industry has been estimated at over $100B, yet fundamental issues such as attributing marketing spend to downstream sales remain unsolved. Mperative’s Founding CEO, Jim McHugh, understands this problem extremely well based on decades of experience as a marketing executive. He and his team have set out to create a new product category (Revenue Marketing) that will help CMOs manage and report key marketing metrics around revenue.
GFT Ventures is thrilled to partner with Mperativ on their journey to become a emerging category leader.
GFT Ventures participated in Figment's $50M Series B round
What it does:
Figment is a crypto staking services provider that works to support the adoption and growth of the Web 3 ecosystem. It is one of the world’s largest blockchain infrastructure and service providers for institutional investors and exchanges / custodians.
Why we found it exciting:
Blockchain infrastructure and services (including staking) will continue to expand, as global stakable assets are over $600B today but only ~20% of those is currently staked. The desire to earn a positive financial yield is an important catalyst in driving further institutional interest in the digital asset industry, and a recent JPMorgan report estimated that staking could become a $40B industry by 2025.
Figment has already achieved some significant milestones and is demonstrating its potential to be a clear winner in this space:
20x quarter-over-quarter growth
100+ institutional clients
$7B+ in assets staked
(Learn more on the Bloomberg coverage here and Figment's own blog post here)
We are excited to accompany Figment on their decentralized journey and back their mission to support the adoption, growth and long term success of the Web 3 ecosystem!
GFT Ventures in the Spotlight
GFT Ventures was featured as a keynote speaker at Orange Telecom’s annual Hello Show conference
Founding Managing Partner Jeff Herbst, through and in-depth interview by Eliot Brown of the Wall Street Journal, shares his perspectives on the future of AI, data science, autonomous machines and other frontier technology investment themes.
Global Corporate Venturing has recognized GFT Ventures as a thought leader in AI by naming Managing Partner Jeff Herbst as a Co-Chair of their Global AI Council
In this extensive written expose by Global Corporate Venturing, Herbst talks AI ecosystem development, his monumental decision to leave Nvidia after 20 years, and his desire to partner with longtime friend Jay Eum to form GFT Ventures.
Managing Partner Jeff Herbst was featured as a lead panelist discussing AI at the recent ValleyML conference
In a panel featuring VCs as well as industry analysts, the discussion focused on, among other things: "What does it take, for an AI Chip Startup to win hearts & minds, and investment - Today & Tomorrow?"