31-year-old venture capitalist Sam Awrabi has raised $10 million to exclusively invest in AI startups, calling the technology “the dominant force of our lifetime.”
AI advancements will be “bigger than both mobile and web combined,” Awrabi said, in part because “the average person’s productivity will be increased 50% to 75% in the coming years.”
Awrabi’s AI Fund I will operate within his VC firm, Banyan Ventures, named for the tree whose prop roots enable it to spread. The fund specializes in AI infrastructure and software startups that have had the technology at their core since inception.
On the infrastructure front, Awrabi said startups working to reduce AI costs — from inference chips to cooling technology — have a massive opportunity.
“Nvidia is already worth $4 trillion, and we’re still in the early days,” he said. “Imagine what the new winners across the AI-native infra stack could be worth 30 years from now?”
On the app front, Awrabi seeks startups with “unique data access” and “high-leverage workflows” that could standardize how work gets done in a particular field.
To date, Banyan has invested in 14 companies, including AI inference chip company Positron, GPU server cooling startup Akash, and Italian AI legal assistant Lexroom.
It will invest in 36 startups in seed and pre-seed stages, most of which have already achieved revenue, and will cut checks ranging from $200,000 to $425,000.
Awrabi serves as the fund’s only general partner, and he’s entering a fiercely competitive AI landscape. Large VC firms dominate funding, though he believes Banyan’s specialization in AI gives it a unique edge.
It’s also increasingly hard to get in on seed rounds, Awrabi said, because AI startups generally require less funding, are generating more revenue, and are moving to Series A rounds more rapidly.
Having worked in AI technical sales since 2018 at Samsung-owned MissingLink.ai and then at Comet and as an advisor to various AI startups, Awrabi said his long relationships in the field provide a window into prospective deals and talent looking for fresh opportunities.
Here’s a look at the pitch deck Awrabi used to raise $10 million for Banyan Ventures’ AI Fund I. Some slides and details have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly.
