Foothill Ventures

We are excited to announce our Robotics Founder & Funder event being held in two weeks on Wednesday, July 17th at the Google Campus in Sunnyvale. This event will be a fascinating hub of innovation and discovery, as investors join us in a VC panel sharing their insights into specific trends and investing strategies while founders in the robotics space join a startup panel to discuss entrepreneurialism, fundraising journeys and more. If you have any interest in diving into the space of robotics and AI as a founder or investor, please RSVP at this link: https://lu.ma/s26ocvh3 A big thanks to our speakers, Han H. of GV (Google Ventures), Sasha Ostojic of Playground Global, Xuhui Shao of Foothill Ventures, Sahil Segal of Toyota Ventures, Marin Tchakarov of Fox Robotics, Max C. of Jacobi Robotics, Benjamin Bolte of K-Scale Labs, and Pengyang (Sophia) Yu of Foothill Ventures, and sponsors Google for Startups and Deel! We look forward to meeting everyone there! 

There are two important recent trends in health tech investing: first, companies like Livongo and Omada Health created a combination of a simple-to-use-device with an accompanying cloud analytics platform. Second, advances in AI have allowed better insights to be obtained from the mass of data being collected. Zeto / Rapid Full-Montage EEG sits at the intersection of these two trends: a high performance wireless EEG headset that is appropriate for home use, combined with an advanced analytics platform. Foothill Ventures is particularly interested in neuroscience as one of the most promising frontiers for scientific advancement (and for investment opportunity); Zeto is a great example of putting this strategy to work. Below is an excerpt from our interview with founder Aswin Gunasekar, where he discusses Zeto’s journey into a healthcare enterprise SaaS company and offers advice to founders. For more, watch the full video here: https://lnkd.in/geydbHtT (and tagging investors & board members John Kim, William Dai, Andrew Chen, Deng Mao, Wen Chen, Tuff Yen, Peng Cheng)

Lithium-ion (NMC, LFP, and Li-polymer) batteries have gotten a lot of attention as the workhorse energy solution for EVs and Consumer Electronics. However, Sodium-ion is “the next big thing”: Sodium-ion batteries are far less expensive, safer, and more stable than lithium-ion batteries (albeit at lower energy density with the prussian blue or prussian white cathode chemistries). This makes sodium-ions ideal for grid, commercial, and residential energy storage solutions, and even for more affordable EVs and slow speed vehicles such as scooters and golf carts. In addition, the United States has the largest sodium reserves, creating a new playing field in the global battery competition. UNIGRID Battery develops advanced sodium-ion batteries for a variety of markets, including grid, commercial, and residential energy storage solutions, and the low speed vehicles' battery modules. Check out a trailer of our interview with founder and CEO Darren H. S. Tan, and watch the full video here: https://lnkd.in/gGmarxUd Leave a comment on the video and share your thoughts! (and tagging investors Mona Alsubaei, Fred Wilson, Sang Bin ONG, John Wood, Bruis van Vlijmen)

Congratulations to Aether Fuels, and welcome to AP Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, CDP Venture Capital SGR and Zeon Ventures Inc.! Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is going to be getting a lot of attention in coming years as a big part of the energy transition puzzle. Aether Fuels has two critical advantages: breakthrough economics and flexible feedstocks. This is a powerful combination in a massive market. We're thrilled to be part of a truly global team of investors in this company (Alejandro Solé Calum Ferguson Dickson Thian, Ph.D Guy Yavin Roee Furman Johanna Schmidtke Michelle Robson Phil Inagaki Ryan Chou)

We are pleased to extend our gratitude to Google for Startups for their invaluable support of our recent Biotech event in June. The gathering brought together over 100 founders, investors, and operators from the life science community, fostering discussions on cutting-edge innovation topics, industry challenges, and the regulatory landscape for Medtech and Biotech startups. As an early-stage VC, we recognize the multifaceted challenges our portfolio companies face. GCP has demonstrated an impressive commitment to the startup ecosystem, offering programs that empower founders and their engineering teams. These initiatives address crucial areas such as cloud infrastructure and technology stacks, facilitating startup growth and scalability. Special thanks to Colleen Pimentel, CPA, Amy Cheng, and the Google team for their contributions to the event's success. We look forward to future collaborations that will continue to drive innovation in the startup ecosystem. For more information about Google for Startups and their support programs, please visit: https://lnkd.in/dTX2ZpT.

d-Matrix is on a tear, and is already an important company. This is a great piece by Sid Sheth, documenting his journey (with Sudeep Bhoja) as they moved from Inphi Corporation/ Marvell Technology to build the next generation compute platform. What they've accomplished has been nothing short of stunning. (tagging Alexander Fang (He/Him), Sasha Ostojic, Jonathan Roosevelt, Connie Sheng, Maynard Kang, Russell Tham)

Semiconductors are having a moment: NVIDIA is now the most valuable company in the world, and there have been megarounds for nextgen semiconductor fabless design companies such as d-Matrix, TetraMem - Accelerate The World, Cerebras Systems Inc., Tenstorrent, and Groq. Less attention has been paid to semiconductor fabrication technologies, but this is where Foothill Ventures is placing a number of bets. Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is one of the most important steps in semiconductor fabrication - it is also a contributor to defects in advanced node process and to some of the environmental impacts associated with chip fabrication. ChEmpower Corporation develops environmentally-sustainable, slurry and defect-free processes via a functionalized reactive pad with novel chemistries. Below is an excerpt from our interview with founder Sudhanshu Misra. Check out the full video that covers market and industry dynamics, the future of ChEmpower, and more here at this link: https://lnkd.in/gnQVJvxb (and tagging investors Sean D. Doyle, Michael Falcon)

A gold rush of investments in AI startups has pushed the brink on new innovation and ideas. All along the west coast, the Generative AI frenzy has been taking over in a steady stream of activity and buzz. Our blog post covering the VC panel from the Seattle AI Frontier Summit we hosted in this April is now live on our Medium page or available to check out here: https://lnkd.in/g5cgc9_H Here are some key takeaways we’d like to share:  - Seed-stage investments remain steady due to heightened interests in AI despite a 20% decline in general VC volume. - Exciting sectors for new AI applications include legal technology, marketing and sales technology, and conversation AI. - Notable advice for prospective founders include having a strong emotional connection to a problem, thorough customer discovery and the ability to attract high-quality talent. Once again, a big thanks to our fellow hosts Future Builders, Ascend, Microsoft Reactor, Essence Venture Capital, and YoungTech Seattle, and a special shout out to our VC panel speakers Xuhui Shao, Jennifer Savage, Tyler Churchill, and the moderator Nate Bek. Take a read and we’d love to hear your thoughts below in the comments!

We are very excited for Ruli (AI teammate for in-house counsels). Legal is a great application for AI-- like code, legal language is highly structured and understandable by AI, so we believe that both software coding and legal will be two of the areas that will take off first for AI applications. Ruli has taken the right approach. First, in-house teams aren't charging by the hour, so are extremely interested in anything that would make their teams more efficient. Second, Bryan Lee has exactly the right background-- he comes from a legal/ product counsel background, but has spent much of his career as a product manager. He's paired with an extraordinarily strong engineer (Xi Sun). Finally, we love SignalFire as the lead investor for this. Not only do their people like Wayne Hu and Veronica Mercado understand this market well, but also SignalFire has built a lot of internal capabilities to help AI application developers build great teams, find early customers, and turn this into an important company.