Meet The Team

Investment Partners

AIX Ventures Investment Partners are fully immersed in the AI Ecosystem

Richard Socher

Founder, You.com 
AIX Co-Founder

  • <span class=investor>INVESTOR</span>

    Angel investor in 30+ startups in the Al space.

    LP in 16 funds.

  • <span class=founder>FOUNDER</span>

    Currently CEO of you.com - a next-gen search engine.

    Former startup founder/CEO of Metamind with successful exit to Salesforce.

  • <span class=academia>ACADEMIA</span>

    Former Adjunct Professor at Stanford Computer Science.

    Top 5 most cited NLP researcher in the world.

  • <span class=experience>INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE</span>

    Former Salesforce Chief Scientist for four years.

    Built & led 520-person team of Al engineering, research, & product at Salesforce.

    Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum

Pieter Abbeel

Founder, Covariant 
UC Berkeley Professor

  • <span class=investor>INVESTOR</span>

    Investor in 20+ early stage startups, many in stealth mode.

  • <span class=founder>FOUNDER</span>

    Co-founder covariant.ai, Co-founder of Gradescope (acquired).

  • <span class=academia>ACADEMIA</span>

    UC Berkeley Professor and Director of the Robot Learning Lab.

    Co-Director of the Berkely AI Research (BAIR) Lab, Advisor to OpenAI.

  • <span class=advisor>ADVISOR</span>

    Preferred Networks, Sapling Intelligence, Deep Valley Labs, Dishcraft Robotics, Off World, TensorFlight, Traptic, onai, inzone.ai, SuperAnnotate, January

Anthony Goldbloom

Founder, Kaggle 
Prolific Angel Investor

  • <span class=investor>INVESTOR</span>

    Investor in 50+ AI startups.

    Notable investments include: Weights & Biases, Flatfile, Coiled, Roboflow, Prefect.

    LP in two venture funds.

  • <span class=founder>FOUNDER</span>

    Founder and CEO of Kaggle, which used predictive modelling competitions to solve problems for organizations such as NASA, Ford, Deloitte, etc.

    Kaggle became the world’s largest community of data scientists and was successfully acquired by Google in 2017.

    Kaggle raised $16MM and included investors such as Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, and DCVC.

  • <span class=awards>AWARDS</span>

    Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 in Technology

Christopher Manning

Stanford ML Professor

  • <span class=academia>ACADEMIA</span>

    Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL).

    Inaugural Thomas M. Siebal Professor in Machine Learning in the Departments of Linguistics and Computer Science at Standford University.

    Associate Director of the Stanford Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Institute (HAI).

    Leader in applying Deep Learning to Natural Language Processing.

    Most cited NLP research in the world.

  • <span class=advisor>ADVISOR</span>

    Eloquent Labs, Lilt, Forethought.ai

HQ Team

Shaun Johnson

AIX Co-Founder & General Partner

  • <span class=experience>INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE</span>

    VP of Engineering, Product, and Design at Lilt

    VP of Product & Design at NimbleRx

  • <span class=education>EDUCATION</span>

    UC Berkeley MBA

  • Stanford University MSEE

  • UT Austin BSEE

Shyam Mani

Principal

  • <span class=experience>INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE</span>

  • Co-Founder and CEO at DealDock (acq. by ThoughtFocus)

  • <span class=investor>INVESTOR</span>

    Kleiner Perkins, focusing on enterprise software, data infrastructure, and cybersecurity.

  • Bain Capital, focusing on growth-stage developer infrastructure and cybersecurity

  • <span class=education>EDUCATION</span>

  • Northwestern University BA

Christina Sfakianos

Investor Relations

  • <span class=experience>INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE</span>

    JPMorgan Chase & Company Institutional and Private Client relationship management

  • Lehman Brothers Institutional and Private Client relationship management

  • <span class=education>EDUCATION</span>

    Loyola University Maryland

Chelsea Goddard

Head of Community

  • <span class=experience>INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE</span>

    Product & Sales at Esri, Mapbox

  • Founder at Apex Haus

  • <span class=investor>INVESTOR</span>

  • Baukunst, Generalist Pre-Seed Lead Investor

  • <span class=academia>ACADEMIA</span>

  • Public Health Research at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Satellite Sentinel Project

  • Public Health Research at Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis

  • <span class=education>EDUCATION</span>

  • University of California, Berkeley BA

  • University of California, Berkeley BA

  • University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business MBA

  • University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health MPH

Krish Ramadurai

Partner

  • <span class=investor>INVESTOR</span>

    Partner at Harmonix Fund, focusing on life sciences, healthcare, and deep technology.

  • Sourced and led diligence on 30+ early-stage investments including notable companies such as Insilico Medicine (IPO), Bit.Bio, Caresyntax, Rad.AI, PathologyWatch (acquired), Volumetric Biotechnologies (acquired), and Trials.AI (acquired).

  • Held board positions for multiple companies including Sorcero, xCures, and Precipoint.

  • <span class=advisor>ADVISOR</span>

  • Nucleate

  • National Venture Capital Association

  • <span class=academia>ACADEMIA</span>

  • Researcher at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs & MIT.

  • Trained under Nobel Laureate Economist Michael Kremer on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Development Innovation Ventures Fund ($149M Fund; 5x ROI)

  • Guest lecturer in Tissue & Biochemical Engineering at Harvard University

  • Authored three books on applied engineering and medicine featured in Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Princeton library collections

  • <span class=education>EDUCATION</span>

  • Oxford University, DPhil & Masters, Engineering Science & Nanomedicine

  • Washington University in St. Louis, MBA

  • Harvard University, Masters, Biology

  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Integrative Biology & Economics, Chemistry Minor

Sara Tatman

Senior EA & Ops

  • <span class=experience>INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE</span>

    20+ years Founder and Operational Support

    Companies ranged from series A-D

    Verticals include: SaaS (Autopilot, Famous), e-Commerce (Minted), Telehealth (Platejoy), FinTech (Plaid)

  • Former Matchmaker - Specializing in human connection

  • <span class=education>EDUCATION</span>

  • California State University, Sacramento