About — Ciphero Ventures

Our Story

Built on a Belief That Security Comes First

Ciphero Ventures was founded in 2020 with a single conviction: the most important technology companies of the next decade will be those that make digital infrastructure fundamentally safer and more resilient. As AI accelerates every aspect of enterprise technology, the surface area for attack expands at an unprecedented rate.

We launched with a $250M Seed Round in July 2020, backed by Sequoia Capital, with the mandate to find and back the founders who would define the future of cybersecurity and applied AI. Our team brings together decades of experience from the investment, intelligence, and engineering communities — people who have spent their careers understanding how systems fail and how to make them robust.

Based in Menlo Park, California, at the heart of the global technology ecosystem, we are positioned to identify transformative companies at the moment when bold ideas meet urgent market need. We are not passive capital. We are partners who believe that the founders solving the hardest security problems deserve investors who truly understand the domain.

Ciphero Ventures founding story and mission

Mission & Values

What Drives Us

Every decision we make — from which founders we back to how we engage after investment — is guided by a consistent set of principles.

Domain Depth

We invest deeply in understanding the technical and market landscape before writing a check. Our team has backgrounds in security research, enterprise software, and intelligence — not just finance.

Founder-First

We exist to serve founders. Every resource we have — our network, our expertise, our capital — is deployed in service of helping the companies we back achieve their potential.

Conviction-Led

We do not follow the herd. We form independent views on where technology is going and back founders who are two to three years ahead of consensus thinking in their domains.

Long-term Partnership

Our relationship with founders does not end at a liquidity event. We build relationships meant to last decades, across companies and careers.

Investment Criteria

What We Look For

We invest at the seed stage in companies at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Here is what drives our decision-making.

Exceptional Founders

We back founders with uncommon domain expertise — security researchers, former intelligence professionals, and engineers who have lived the problems they are solving.

Genuine Technical Differentiation

We look for proprietary technical approaches — novel detection algorithms, unique data advantages, or architectural innovations that create durable competitive moats.

Large Addressable Markets

Cybersecurity and AI spending are both growing faster than overall enterprise IT. We focus on categories where the long-term market opportunity is measured in billions.

Anchor Investor

Backed By

Ciphero Ventures completed a $250M Seed Round in July 2020, anchored by Sequoia Capital — one of the world's most storied venture capital partnerships, with investments in Apple, Google, Oracle, and PayPal.

Sequoia Capital

This relationship gives our portfolio companies access to a global network of operators, executives, and investors that accelerates their path from seed to scale.

About Ciphero Ventures