Founders Fund

Founders Fund, Inc. is a venture capital firm headquartered in San Francisco, California, established in 2005. The firm specializes in investing across various stages, including seed, early, mid, and growth stages, with a focus on transformative technologies. Founders Fund targets a wide range of sectors, such as aerospace, artificial intelligence, advanced computing, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy, fintech, and consumer internet. The firm aims to support companies that are developing revolutionary technologies and typically invests between $500,000 and $300 million in its portfolio companies. Founders Fund's partners have a strong background in technology, having been investors, founders, and early employees of notable technology companies, including PayPal. The firm seeks to make investments globally, emphasizing innovation and impact.

Delian Asparouhov

Principal

Leigh Marie Braswell

Principal

Lauren Gross

Partner and COO

Jeffrey Lonsdale

Managing Director, Asia

John Luttig

Principal

Amin Mirzadegan

Principal

Scott Nolan

Partner

Luke Nosek

Managing Partner

Neil Ruthven

CFO

Brian Singerman

Partner

Napoleon Ta

Partner

Matias Van Thienen

Principal

Past deals in Hardware

Northwood Space

Series A in 2025
Northwood Space is a hardware solution that dramatically increases the number of orbits and frequency bands available for satellite communications from the ground.

Icon

Venture Round in 2025
Icon is a technology company specializing in artificial intelligence-driven advertising solutions. It offers a platform known as the AI Admaker, which leverages advanced algorithms to create and optimize advertisements for various brands. Additionally, Icon is involved in the development of smart hardware, particularly smart mirrors that integrate with Alexa Voice Service. As an Amazon-approved system integrator, Icon enables brands to incorporate voice capabilities into screen-based devices, including smart display speakers and smart home devices. The company prides itself on providing customized hardware and software solutions tailored to clients' needs, supported by a skilled technology development team. Icon's innovative designs have garnered industry recognition, including accolades at the CES Innovation Awards, highlighting its commitment to merging technology with user-friendly applications.

Icon

Venture Round in 2025
Icon is a technology company specializing in artificial intelligence-driven advertising solutions. It offers a platform known as the AI Admaker, which leverages advanced algorithms to create and optimize advertisements for various brands. Additionally, Icon is involved in the development of smart hardware, particularly smart mirrors that integrate with Alexa Voice Service. As an Amazon-approved system integrator, Icon enables brands to incorporate voice capabilities into screen-based devices, including smart display speakers and smart home devices. The company prides itself on providing customized hardware and software solutions tailored to clients' needs, supported by a skilled technology development team. Icon's innovative designs have garnered industry recognition, including accolades at the CES Innovation Awards, highlighting its commitment to merging technology with user-friendly applications.

Hextronics

Seed Round in 2024
Hextronics is an engineering company founded in 2020 by Curt Lary and based in Miami, Florida. The company specializes in developing battery-swapping drones tailored for the agriculture, government, and construction sectors, enabling enhanced aerial autonomy and continuous operations. Hextronics offers a diverse range of drones equipped with various features, along with drone accessories and computer vision algorithms, to support clients in automating their drone operations effectively. Through its innovative Drone-in-a-Box solution with Rapid Battery Exchange, Hextronics aims to streamline and improve the efficiency of drone applications across multiple industries.

Nominal

Series A in 2024
Nominal offers an engineering data infrastructure platform tailored for hardware teams, focusing on the validation of mission-critical systems. The platform integrates various data sources to analyze and visualize critical hardware information, facilitating effective communication between machines and human engineers. By streamlining workflows, Nominal enables engineers to gain essential insights, supporting timely and reliable decision-making in industrial settings.

Nominal

Seed Round in 2024
Nominal offers an engineering data infrastructure platform tailored for hardware teams, focusing on the validation of mission-critical systems. The platform integrates various data sources to analyze and visualize critical hardware information, facilitating effective communication between machines and human engineers. By streamlining workflows, Nominal enables engineers to gain essential insights, supporting timely and reliable decision-making in industrial settings.

Northwood Space

Seed Round in 2024
Northwood Space is a hardware solution that dramatically increases the number of orbits and frequency bands available for satellite communications from the ground.

Opal

Series A in 2023
Making it better at capturing incredible low-light video. Even in dimly lit room, you’ll get a level of detail and color that wasn’t possible before. The Opal C1 comes with MicMesh™, an array of beamforming microphones that find and focus on the sound of your voice. And with intelligent noise cancellation, every ding, drop and dog bark is filtered out to get an audio experience that clearly speaks for itself.

Ayar Labs

Series B in 2020
Ayar Labs, Inc. specializes in the development of optical interconnect technology, focusing on high-density electronic-photonic chiplets and lasers designed to enhance data transmission capabilities. Its flagship product, TeraPHY, is a monolithic in-package optical I/O solution that enables high bandwidth, low latency, and power-efficient short-reach interconnects, making it suitable for applications in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, cloud computing, telecommunications, and aerospace. The company's innovative approach leverages industry-standard silicon processing techniques to create optical interconnect chiplets that replace traditional electrical-based I/O, addressing performance and efficiency challenges in the semiconductor and computing industries. By optimizing data movement within AI systems, Ayar Labs aims to alleviate compute and bandwidth bottlenecks associated with complex large language models, thereby maximizing computational efficiency while minimizing costs and power consumption. Established in 2015 and headquartered in Emeryville, California, Ayar Labs also has an office in Santa Clara, California.

Tempo

Series B in 2020
Tempo designs and develops a home fitness platform with personal guidance to help users in their training sessions. It features live elite trainers who can help users when they make mistakes. It has built-in three-dimensional sensors that track form, counts reps, and recommend weights. It helps users to improve in real-time. Powered by 3D motion sensors and AI, it analyzes 25 of the body’s essential joints as users work out and gives understood form feedback. Moawia Eldeeb and Joshua Augustin founded it as Pivot in 2015, with its headquarters in San Francisco in California.

PsiQuantum

Series C in 2020
PsiQuantum is focused on developing the first utility-scale quantum computer to address significant global challenges. The company utilizes photonic qubits, which offer substantial advantages for creating a fault-tolerant, general-purpose quantum computer. By leveraging advanced semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, PsiQuantum aims to deliver quantum technology that can foster advancements across various sectors, including climate, healthcare, finance, energy, agriculture, transportation, and communications. This innovative approach positions PsiQuantum to contribute meaningfully to solving real-world problems through enhanced computational capabilities.

Tempo

Series A in 2019
Tempo designs and develops a home fitness platform with personal guidance to help users in their training sessions. It features live elite trainers who can help users when they make mistakes. It has built-in three-dimensional sensors that track form, counts reps, and recommend weights. It helps users to improve in real-time. Powered by 3D motion sensors and AI, it analyzes 25 of the body’s essential joints as users work out and gives understood form feedback. Moawia Eldeeb and Joshua Augustin founded it as Pivot in 2015, with its headquarters in San Francisco in California.

Massless

Seed Round in 2019
Massless Limited is a company based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, that specializes in developing hardware and software for three-dimensional interactions within augmented and virtual reality. Founded in 2014, Massless produces the Massless Pen, a device that enhances the capabilities of designers and engineers by facilitating intuitive interactions in 3D digital environments. This pen features high precision, optical tracking at 60 Hz, tactile feedback, and surface and orientation sensing, enabling users to create and manipulate large 3D models in real time. Beyond its core technology, Massless is also engaged in the evolving creator economy, working to empower creatives in media and entertainment by supporting the launch of independent studios and fostering new content on blockchain platforms. The company's team comprises physicists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and creatives, all dedicated to advancing the intersection of technology and creativity.

Ayar Labs

Series A in 2018
Ayar Labs, Inc. specializes in the development of optical interconnect technology, focusing on high-density electronic-photonic chiplets and lasers designed to enhance data transmission capabilities. Its flagship product, TeraPHY, is a monolithic in-package optical I/O solution that enables high bandwidth, low latency, and power-efficient short-reach interconnects, making it suitable for applications in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, cloud computing, telecommunications, and aerospace. The company's innovative approach leverages industry-standard silicon processing techniques to create optical interconnect chiplets that replace traditional electrical-based I/O, addressing performance and efficiency challenges in the semiconductor and computing industries. By optimizing data movement within AI systems, Ayar Labs aims to alleviate compute and bandwidth bottlenecks associated with complex large language models, thereby maximizing computational efficiency while minimizing costs and power consumption. Established in 2015 and headquartered in Emeryville, California, Ayar Labs also has an office in Santa Clara, California.

Synthego

Series C in 2018
Synthego Corporation is a genome engineering company focused on advancing life science research and therapeutic development to improve human health. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Synthego offers a comprehensive platform that integrates proprietary hardware, software, bioinformatics, chemistries, and molecular biology. The company's product portfolio includes engineered cells, CRISPR kits, and bioinformatics tools designed for various applications such as pathway analysis, target validation, disease modeling, and diagnostics. By leveraging machine learning and automation, Synthego enables researchers in biotechnology and academia to conduct efficient and precise gene editing, facilitating rapid advancements in drug discovery and development. The company serves a global customer base, distributing its products through various channels, including online sales and partnerships in multiple countries.

Halter

Series A in 2018
Halter Limited, founded in 2016 and based in Morrinsville, New Zealand, specializes in the development of GPS-enabled, solar-powered collars for livestock. These innovative collars allow farmers to virtually fence their pastures and monitor their cattle effectively. By utilizing this technology, Halter aims to enhance farm productivity, improve animal welfare, and promote sustainable farming practices. The company is dedicated to empowering farmers to manage their operations more efficiently while also safeguarding the environment.

CTRL-Labs

Series B in 2018
CTRL-Labs Corporation, founded in 2015 and based in New York City, specializes in developing non-invasive neural interface technology aimed at enhancing the interaction between humans and machines. The company's flagship product, the CTRL-kit, is a wireless wristband equipped with sensors that captures neural signals, allowing users to control digital devices through simple electronic pulses. This innovative platform is designed to support various applications in virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, productivity, and clinical research. By providing developers with a software development kit (SDK) and application programming interface (API), CTRL-Labs enables the integration of neural control into their applications. The company's long-term vision focuses on fostering mass consumer adoption of neural interfaces, establishing a new standard for human-machine collaboration that transforms how users engage with technology.

Indee Labs

Seed Round in 2018
Indee Labs specializes in developing innovative hardware for gene delivery, focusing on a non-viral intracellular delivery system. This technology facilitates the efficient development and scalable manufacture of gene-modified cell therapies, including chimeric antigen receptor T cells. By employing microfluidic vortex shedding, the system enables the gentle delivery of constructs such as nucleic acids, proteins, and gene-editing complexes to a variety of cell types, ensuring maximum recovery of viable, modified cells with minimal disruption. Indee Labs collaborates with the Australian National Fabrication Facility and has established its presence with offices in Sydney and lab space at Bonneville Labs in Berkeley. The company is recognized for its contributions to the field, having affiliations with NSW Health, IndieBio, Y Combinator, and MBC Biolabs.

Leap Motion

Series C in 2017
Leap Motion, Inc. is a company that specializes in designing and developing motion-control hardware and software, particularly for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Leap Motion focuses on creating advanced 3D motion-control technology that allows users to interact with digital environments through natural hand and finger movements. The company serves various sectors, including healthcare, education, gaming, automotive, retail, and the arts, and collaborates with major VR manufacturers to integrate its technology into mobile VR and AR headsets. In May 2012, Leap Motion changed its name from OcuSpec Inc. and has since operated as a subsidiary of Ultrahaptics Limited. The company's mission is to eliminate barriers between people and technology, enabling more intuitive and dynamic interactions in virtual spaces.

Synthego

Series B in 2017
Synthego Corporation is a genome engineering company focused on advancing life science research and therapeutic development to improve human health. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Synthego offers a comprehensive platform that integrates proprietary hardware, software, bioinformatics, chemistries, and molecular biology. The company's product portfolio includes engineered cells, CRISPR kits, and bioinformatics tools designed for various applications such as pathway analysis, target validation, disease modeling, and diagnostics. By leveraging machine learning and automation, Synthego enables researchers in biotechnology and academia to conduct efficient and precise gene editing, facilitating rapid advancements in drug discovery and development. The company serves a global customer base, distributing its products through various channels, including online sales and partnerships in multiple countries.

Ayar Labs

Seed Round in 2016
Ayar Labs, Inc. specializes in the development of optical interconnect technology, focusing on high-density electronic-photonic chiplets and lasers designed to enhance data transmission capabilities. Its flagship product, TeraPHY, is a monolithic in-package optical I/O solution that enables high bandwidth, low latency, and power-efficient short-reach interconnects, making it suitable for applications in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, cloud computing, telecommunications, and aerospace. The company's innovative approach leverages industry-standard silicon processing techniques to create optical interconnect chiplets that replace traditional electrical-based I/O, addressing performance and efficiency challenges in the semiconductor and computing industries. By optimizing data movement within AI systems, Ayar Labs aims to alleviate compute and bandwidth bottlenecks associated with complex large language models, thereby maximizing computational efficiency while minimizing costs and power consumption. Established in 2015 and headquartered in Emeryville, California, Ayar Labs also has an office in Santa Clara, California.

ROLI

Series B in 2016
ROLI is a music technology firm that specializes in creating innovative hardware and software solutions for music learning and creation. The company develops a modular music creation system that features a three-dimensional pressure-sensing digital keyboard, which allows users to manipulate sound through variations in pressure. This unique design promotes expressive musical experiences, making it easier for individuals to learn and practice music. ROLI's team consists of musicians, programmers, teachers, and engineers dedicated to reimagining the music-making process through their products, which include a range of accessories and sounds tailored to enhance musical expression.

REX Computing

Seed Round in 2015
REX Computing, founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, California, specializes in the development of high-density computing systems that utilize massively parallel architectures. The company focuses on creating computer servers designed for hyper-efficiency, employing low-power ARM chips, which are commonly used in tablets and smartphones. This innovative approach aims to meet the demands of supercomputing by simplifying complexity and significantly reducing both power consumption and physical footprint.

June

Series A in 2015
June is a smart oven for your home that makes cooking perfectly easy. June’s mission is to use the power of technology to make cooking perfectly easy for everyone. we make kitchens feel like magic. We’re here to help the world look forward to cooking dinner again (and breakfast, lunch, snacks, and late-night leftovers too) because we love food. We live for it. So, we wake up every day on a mission to make life taste better. Our team of designers, hardware, and software engineers is committed to transforming the kitchen experience.

Synthego

Series A in 2013
Synthego Corporation is a genome engineering company focused on advancing life science research and therapeutic development to improve human health. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Redwood City, California, Synthego offers a comprehensive platform that integrates proprietary hardware, software, bioinformatics, chemistries, and molecular biology. The company's product portfolio includes engineered cells, CRISPR kits, and bioinformatics tools designed for various applications such as pathway analysis, target validation, disease modeling, and diagnostics. By leveraging machine learning and automation, Synthego enables researchers in biotechnology and academia to conduct efficient and precise gene editing, facilitating rapid advancements in drug discovery and development. The company serves a global customer base, distributing its products through various channels, including online sales and partnerships in multiple countries.

Leap Motion

Seed Round in 2011
Leap Motion, Inc. is a company that specializes in designing and developing motion-control hardware and software, particularly for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Leap Motion focuses on creating advanced 3D motion-control technology that allows users to interact with digital environments through natural hand and finger movements. The company serves various sectors, including healthcare, education, gaming, automotive, retail, and the arts, and collaborates with major VR manufacturers to integrate its technology into mobile VR and AR headsets. In May 2012, Leap Motion changed its name from OcuSpec Inc. and has since operated as a subsidiary of Ultrahaptics Limited. The company's mission is to eliminate barriers between people and technology, enabling more intuitive and dynamic interactions in virtual spaces.
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