M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund

Thank you, The Scenarionist for hosting Michael Stewart for your 50th episode! He loves few things more than waxing poetic about the #startup sector and #AI infrastructure. Great questions asked in this insightful conversation. ??

Congratulations Nixla! ??

The M12 team has an incredible presence at #MSIgnite this year. ?? Thank you to Typeface, Databook, AKA Identity, and WorkSpan for attending and sharing your innovative visions with the Microsoft community during this important event! And special shout outs to Neon, who participated in the Microsoft Azure Data keynote session, and Armada who joined Satya Nadella on stage during his keynote address! ?? We're proud to empower outstanding startups like these to continue changing our world for the better, and excited to see what other exciting things are shared this week.

??Big news for Sid Sheth, Sudeep Bhoja, and the whole d-Matrix team?? They have officially emerged from stealth and are ready to tackle memory challenges for chips with SRAM. d-Matrix has raised $154M in its Series B round with funding led by Temasek and 24 other companies, including M12. As Sid put it, "We saw transformers and generative AI coming and founded d-Matrix to address inference challenges around the largest computing opportunity of our time." ?? Read more about their vision in an article penned by Karl Freund at Forbes: https://lnkd.in/geB3T8hg

Loving to see M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund portfolio company Armada highlighted in Satya's keynote this morning at Microsoft #Ignite2024!

?? A huge congratulations to HiddenLayer for being recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor in #AI Security! ?? This is a powerful validation of its mission to enhance AI safety and security. Keep up the fantastic work, team HiddenLayer! You can read more about this news here: https://lnkd.in/grkFGaFZ #AISecurity #AISafety #GartnerCoolVendor

It's exciting to be included in conversations with the innovators of tomorrow like the ones at the UC Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET). ?? Thanks, Todd Graham, for representing M12 in this discussion and sharing your valuable insights on fundraising.

No matter the industry you're in, better #accessibility is crucial, and #AI is not exempt from that fact. This is why M12 saw the value in supporting companies like Evinced, "a startup building solutions to improve web and mobile accessibility." Thank you Allie Garfinkle at Fortune for sharing Navin R. Thadani's story and shedding light on what the path ahead looks like for accessibility advocacy. https://lnkd.in/gKUbcmd6

"In many ways, all the things you don’t know [about founding a startup] are what makes starting a company magical. You’re not trapped by preconceived notions of the right thing to do or what is possible. Often, you solve problems that others have written off simply because you didn’t know you “weren’t supposed to solve them.” ?? Hersh Tapadia, CEO and Co-founder of Allstacks shared his founder journey with M12 in our latest Founders Feature installment. He delves into his personal journey as a startup founder, Allstacks unique path in the the startup world, and even some great book recommendations! ?? You can read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/gxi_dAQb #Startups #Founders #Leadership

Congratulations to Conduktor on their $30 million Series B funding round led by RTP Global, with participation from Ansa Capital, Accel and our team! ?????? We're excited to see how you continue to bolster your platform for streaming data management and help protect companies from the rippling impact of "bad data." Keep up the great work! Full story from Kyle Wiggers on TechCrunch: https://lnkd.in/d7SeJGhN