Zetta Venture Partners Names Apoorva Pandhi Managing Director

Former Foundation Capital partner joins specialized firm to continue to focus on AI and software infrastructure investing in early-stage companies.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Zetta Venture Partners, the first VC firm exclusively focused on investing in AI, today announced that Apoorva Pandhi has joined as a managing director.

In his new role, Pandhi will be responsible for co-managing the firm's fund alongside Zetta's managing director and Silicon Valley veteran, Jocelyn Goldfein, and the firm's visionary founder and managing director, Mark Gorenberg. The firm is committed to investing in pre-product-market-fit, AI-first startups with B2B business models that are redefining or pioneering new categories, with the power of Machine Learning. This includes companies such as Kaggle, Tractable and Domino Data Lab.

"Zetta is delighted to welcome Apoorva to our leadership team," said Goldfein. "With over a decade of experience as a founder, operator and investor in AI and infrastructure, Apoorva has both an appreciation for technical insight, as well as a deep understanding of go-to-market strategy. His unique combination of skills will bring tremendous value to Zetta and our early-stage AI-first portfolio companies."

Pandhi comes to Zetta from Foundation Capital where he served as a Partner, and invested in a number of early breakout ML, data and developer companies. Some of his select seed investments include companies like Outerbounds (OSS Metaflow), Electric Sheep, Motherduck (OSS Duckdb), Fennel, Tabular (OSS Iceberg), and Bluesky amongst others. Prior to Foundation Capital he was Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Quid, a growth-stage NLP and ML platform and he was the co-founder of Funnl Labs, a ML platform focused on aggregating and personalizing communication across email, social media and messaging. He also started his investor journey at Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he focused on enterprise and consumer investments.

"I'm honored to join Zetta, the firm's focus on investing in early-stage founders in data, ML and software infrastructure aligns with my passion for the space," said Pandhi. "I also admire the team's deep operating and investing experience in ML and software infrastructure and I look forward to helping Zetta continue to back technical founders in their 0 to 1 journey and equip them with a strong go-to-market playbook to get to product market fit."

"Apoorva shares our passion for investing in entrepreneurs who are leading the generational shift in the tech industry. When we heard the way founders rave about working with him, we knew he was the right leader for Zetta," added Gorenberg.

Zetta Venture Partners is the first VC firm focused exclusively on investing in AI. Founded in 2013—the first year a zettabyte of data went across the internet—the firm manages $365M in assets across three funds. Each member of Zetta's leadership team has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, operator and investor. The firm leads investment rounds in pre-traction, AI-first companies with B2B business models, including Kaggle, Domo, Domino Data Lab,and Tractable. Visit www.zettavp.com for more information.

SOURCE Zetta Venture Partners