A New York-based pre-seed and seed fund investing in AI for critical infrastructure.
Read the Fund III thesis →
Swell backs pre-seed and seed founders who see, move, and build differently.
They possess unique insight from the inside of an industry, but think with an outsider perspective.
They act ahead of consensus, learn rapidly, and move faster than anyone else.
Technical depth. Commercial instincts. The rare combination that turns insight into revenue.
We back founders rebuilding the systems that run the world with AI. Read the Fund III thesis →
Software that runs, coordinates or secures consequential operations, with deep integration into the customer’s business.
Satellite platforms and defense technology built to operate under mission conditions.
Companies combining foundation models with wet labs, where experiments test what the models predict and generate data that improves the next round of designs.
Energy, robotics and manufacturing companies developing new ways to expand resources, produce energy and automate physical work.
“The difference with Swell is they get you revenue, not just capital. Those early hires closed the first deals and helped build the machine. They have a worldview that resonates with me, startups are won by people not technology.”
Partners for 15+ years. From our first angel check into TapAd ($360M exit) to our current fund, we’ve been building together for our entire careers.
We don’t outsource conviction. We operate as a single unit. One shared judgment, one decision. We earn our access through the trust of the founders we serve. That stability, shared judgment, and operational DNA comes standard with every check we write.
When we find the right founder, the best part of this job is two words: “We’re believers.”
We were building AI companies before it was a category. Met in 2008 as early employees at an AI startup, long before the hype cycle made it fashionable.
We’ve been investing in critical infrastructure since 2018, when space, defense, and bio weren’t yet consensus trades. We know what early-stage chaos feels like. The weight of delivery when nobody else believes yet.
10,000+ hours assessing founders and operators: that’s where the pattern recognition comes from. We know what exceptional founders look like across contexts and domains.
The founder is the expert. Our job is to recognize it early, then help them build the team.
We don’t just write checks. We build the teams that build the companies. Early-stage outcomes follow power laws, and so does early-stage hiring. The right person changes everything.
75+ VP-level placements across the portfolio. From Sales and BD to Marketing and Product, we identify the gaps before they become bottlenecks. We productized that judgment as Archetype, hiring software built from those 10,000+ interviews, free to every founder we back.
We help founders build the team, pressure-test the go-to-market, and get to revenue faster. Not as a “platform service.” As partners who show up in the messy middle.