Press Release Archives

Alchemist Announces Backing from the Mayfield Fund

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Ana Cantu

MENLO PARK and SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – January 30, 2024

Alchemist is announcing today an investment from the Mayfield Fund.

The money will continue to support Alchemist’s mission of backing and launching the most promising startups disrupting enterprise innovation.

“We are thrilled to continue our long-standing partnership with the Mayfield Fund, which was one of the original backers of Alchemist when we first started,” says Ravi Belani, Managing Director of the Alchemist accelerator. “Mayfield has a deep understanding of how to support technical founding teams building iconic companies over the long haul. We are honored to partner with Mayfield again to usher in the next generation of founding teams with both deep technical skills and shrewd market vision. These are the teams that change the world.”

Beyond just investing in Alchemist, Mayfield will also be supporting Alchemist founders with ecosystem events, advice, and thought leadership.

“Mayfield and Alchemist have always been aligned in understanding the power of visionary, tech-driven teams to change the world,” says Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner of the Mayfield Fund. “These are unprecedented times for being an entrepreneur, and we are proud to back Alchemist to be a launching pad for ambitious teams looking to change the enterprise.”

For more information about Alchemist and to apply for the next class, visit alchemistaccelerator.com.

About Mayfield

Mayfield is an early-stage venture capital firm with a people-first philosophy and $3 billion under management. The Firm has a proven track record of partnering with founders starting at the inception stage to help build iconic companies that leverage innovations in IT and biology. The Firm has invested in more than 550 companies, resulting in 120 IPOs and more than 225 acquisitions. Some recent notable investments include HashiCorp, Lyft, Poshmark/Naver, Mammoth Biosciences, Marketo/Adobe, NUVIA/Qualcomm, Outreach, Rancher/SUSE, SolarCity/Tesla, and Volterra/F5. For more information, go to mayfield.com or follow Mayfield Fund on LinkedIn.

About Alchemist

Alchemist is a venture-backed accelerator focused on the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (not consumers). Alchemist backers include many of the top corporate and VC funds―including Mayfield Fund, Khosla Ventures, Foundation Capital, BASF, NEC, Cisco, Siemens, GE, and Salesforce, among others. The accelerator’s primary screening criteria is on teams, with primacy placed on having distinctive technical co-founders. Notable alums include LaunchDarkly, Kyte, MoEngage, Foresight, Privacera, Matternet, and mPharma. For more information, please visit alchemistaccelerator.com.

Former TechCrunch Editor Launches New Podcast for AI Founders

Posted on December 4, 2023April 1, 2024 by Ana Cantu

MENLO PARK, Calif. – WEBWIRE – Monday, December 4, 2023

Mayfield, a top-tier early-stage venture capital firm, today announced its sponsorship of “Fund/Build/Scale,” a new podcast series that will offer listeners a holistic look into the world of AI startups.

Across ten episodes, host Walter Thompson (TechCrunch, San Francisco Magazine, Hoodline) will delve deeply into the strategies, challenges and tactics shaping the future of artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship.

“Inception and early-stage investing is a craft we have honed over decades,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner, Mayfield. “AI founders need classic company building guidance around strategy, hiring, fundraising, go–to–go-to-market, in addition to special considerations around building ethics into their DNA and navigating a regulatory environment. We believe that Walter is the perfect moderator of these conversations, given his insight into founder needs at TechCrunch. We look forward to guests sharing actionable insights with a broad audience.”

Each episode will uncover a trove of practical methods as Thompson discusses fundraising, product development, governance, policy/regulation, community building, going to market and other essential topics. Listeners will get an insider’s perspective on what it takes to build an ethically responsible company in one of tech’s most competitive and rapidly evolving sectors.

Confirmed guests include:

Investors: Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner, and Vijay Reddy, AIStart investor (Mayfield);
Founders: May Habib (Writer), Jerry Liu (Llamaindex), Jorge Torres (MindsDB), Rehan Jalil (Securiti), Gaurav Misra (Captions);
Enterprise executives: Maria Latushkin (Albertsons), Jack Berkowitz, (former chief data officer, ADP);
Developer community leaders: Adam Seligman (AWS) and Ozzy Johnson (NVIDIA);
Privacy and compliance experts: Raj Judge (Wilson Sonsini), Laura Bisesto (Nextdoor), with additional academics, ethicists and policymakers forthcoming.

The podcast is designed to provide value to a wide audience, from aspiring AI entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts to seasoned investors and business strategists. “The guests I’m interviewing aren’t just engaging and educational,” said Thompson. “We’re exploring actual tactics that listeners can put into practice inside their own startups and test for themselves.”

Already in production, Thompson will record two live episodes in front of a live audience at Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco on January 31, 2024. Tickets are available for purchase via Eventbrite (http://fundbuildscale.eventbrite.com).

Don’t miss the opportunity to join this ongoing conversation about the intersection of AI innovation and investment. Subscribe now to “Fund/Build/Scale” — the podcast will be available on all major platforms, with the first episode launching in February 2024.

For further information, updates, and exclusive content, follow “Fund/Build/Scale” on:

Substack: https://fundbuildscale.substack.com
Eventbrite: http://fundbuildscale.eventbrite.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14341226
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@FBSpodcast

About Mayfield
Mayfield is an early-stage venture capital firm with a people-first philosophy and $3 billion under management. The Firm has a proven track record of partnering with founders starting at the inception stage to help build iconic companies that leverage innovations in IT and biology. The Firm has invested in more than 550 companies, resulting in 120 IPOs and more than 225 acquisitions. Some recent notable investments include HashiCorp, Lyft, Poshmark/Naver, Mammoth Biosciences, Marketo/Adobe, NUVIA/Qualcomm, Outreach, Rancher/SUSE, SolarCity/Tesla and Volterra/F5. For more information, go to https://www.mayfield.com or follow @MayfieldFund.

Mayfield Raises $955 Million Across Two New Funds Dedicated to Early Stage Investing

Posted on May 8, 2023May 8, 2023 by KBD Admin

Mayfield Announces $750 Million Across Two New Venture Capital Funds

Posted on March 25, 2020August 24, 2023 by Mayfield

Mayfield, a venture capital firm with a 50 year history of people first investing, today announced that it has closed on $750 million in new capital across two venture capital funds, the $475 million Mayfield XVI and the $275 million Mayfield Select II, bringing the firm’s current assets under management to over $2.5 billion.

Mayfield XVI will continue the firm’s early-stage focus, primarily investing in companies at the ideation or early product/customers stage. Mayfield Select II follows the strategy of Mayfield Select I, to invest in later-stage rounds of Mayfield breakout portfolio companies. The firm is expanding the charter of Mayfield Select II to invest in companies outside its portfolio which are at early-growth stages with product-market fit and are demonstrating inflection in their business.

“We appreciate the vote of confidence of our limited partners, especially in these unprecedented and difficult times,” said Navin Chaddha, Mayfield Managing Director. “At the same time, we want to recognize the hard work and sacrifice of our entrepreneurs, who inspire us every day and help us achieve top-tier returns. While we are all navigating choppy waters right now, we go into the future feeling confident about their imagination and resilience. We believe it’s time to lean forward, as fear is the only thing that limits one’s potential.”

About Mayfield

Mayfield is a venture capital firm with a people-first philosophy and $2.5 billion under management. Mayfield invests primarily in early-stage consumer, enterprise and engineering biology companies. Since its founding 50 years ago, the firm has invested in more than 500 companies, resulting in 117 IPOs and more than 200 acquisitions. Some notable investments in recent years include CloudSimple, Elastica, Grove Collaborative, HashiCorp, Lyft, Mammoth Biosciences, Marketo, Moat, Outreach, Poshmark, ServiceMax and SolarCity. For more information, go to https://www.mayfield.com or follow @MayfieldFund.