Chemistry Ventures is an early-stage venture firm that backs AI startups across infrastructure and applications. The firm is now raising a $500 million second fund, a sharp step up from its $350 million debut vehicle, at a moment when founders want investors who can move fast without acting like bloated financial institutions. Chemistry launched in 2024 by Mark Goldberg, Ethan Kurzweil, and Kristina Shen — three longtime venture investors who left Index Ventures, Bessemer, and Andreessen Horowitz to build a more concentrated model. The Wall Street Journal reported the new fund is already oversubscribed and expected to close soon.
What does Chemistry Ventures actually do?
Chemistry Ventures isn’t a software company. Its product is concentrated early-stage capital plus hands-on work with founders. The firm leads seed and Series A investments in software and AI companies. It keeps supporting those companies through later rounds rather than treating the first check like a one-off bet.
That matters because Chemistry is selling a very specific model to founders. Instead of one partner championing a deal while the rest of the firm stays distant, all 3 founding partners actively support each investment. Short version: the partners are the platform. That’s a pretty direct shot at bigger venture platforms that promise help but often spread that help thin.
Its investing map is also tighter than the generic “we back the future” line a lot of firms use. Chemistry focuses on AI-native founders and has built a portfolio that touches conversational agents, AI note-taking, identity infrastructure, training data, healthcare software, creative AI, and procurement automation. The public portfolio includes names such as Decagon, Granola, Persona, Datacurve, ComfyUI, and Yuzu Health. The source article also lists Serval and Nova Intelligence among its bets.
Before Chemistry, a founder might raise from an angel syndicate, a sprawling multi-stage fund, or a sector generalist. Chemistry’s pitch is simpler: one focused AI investor, larger early checks, and partners who’ve already sat on dozens of boards. That’s not revolutionary. But it is what a lot of AI founders want right now.
Who founded Chemistry Ventures and why now?
The founding story
Chemistry formally introduced itself on October 22, 2024, with a $350 million first fund and a mandate to lead investments in standout software companies at the seed and Series A stages. The founders said the idea started with a basic question: what would a venture firm look like if its success were fully aligned with founders’ success? Their answer was a lean firm built to out-hustle larger franchises that had gotten distracted by scale.
Founder market fit
The trio came in with unusually strong receipts. Mark Goldberg spent nearly a decade as a partner at Index Ventures, focusing on early-stage software and fintech, and before that he was one of the first business hires at Dropbox during its hypergrowth years. Ethan Kurzweil spent 16 years at Bessemer, investing across developer platforms, data infrastructure, gaming, and tools for knowledge workers, after earlier stops at Linden Lab and The Wall Street Journal. Kristina Shen was a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz for 4 years leading B2B software investing, after 7 years as a partner at Bessemer.
Past execution
This isn’t a first-time investor group learning on the fly. The founders have collectively led nearly 100 investments, served on more than 50 boards, and backed over a dozen unicorns at the early stage. The firm specifically points to pre-Chemistry investments including PagerDuty, Intercom, Persona, Twitch, and Pave.
That history is the real sell to limited partners. Emerging managers usually have to prove either a weirdly differentiated thesis or elite access. Chemistry shows up with both.
Fundraising details and market position
The new vehicle is being raised as Chemistry Ventures Fund II, L.P. A Form D filed with the SEC on June 25, 2026 lists a total offering amount of $500 million. It notes that the first sale had not yet occurred as of that filing and shows $0 sold at that moment. A week later, reporting said the fund was oversubscribed and nearing a close. The filing captured an earlier snapshot.
Competition is a little tricky here because Chemistry doesn’t compete with one obvious lookalike. Its real rivals are big multi-stage firms chasing AI, specialist seed funds trying to own the earliest relationships, and angels with deep operator networks. The legacy alternative is even messier. Founders stitch together capital from smaller checks while hoping someone on the cap table can actually help recruit, price a round, or think through enterprise go-to-market. Chemistry’s angle is to stay selective, lead early, and bring 3 brand-name investors into each company rather than one busy partner and a giant logo.
Why does the new Chemistry Ventures fund matter?
A second fund this large says a lot more than “LPs liked fund one.” It says limited partners still believe there’s room for new venture franchises, even in a fundraising market that has been much tougher on smaller and mid-sized firms than the AI headlines make it seem. Chemistry launched only in 2024. Getting to a $500 million follow-on vehicle this quickly is not normal.
It also changes what the firm can do for founders. A bigger pool gives Chemistry more room to lead rounds and defend ownership in its best companies. It can also keep backing winners as AI startups raise capital at faster and more expensive clips. Because the firm already invests across both infrastructure and applications, the larger fund gives it more flexibility to keep making concentrated bets instead of spraying tiny checks everywhere.
There’s a tradeoff, though. Chemistry built its brand on being lean and highly involved. Once a fund gets bigger, founders start watching for drift. If the firm keeps the same selectivity with more capital, that’s interesting. If it starts behaving like the larger platforms it was built to critique, the whole pitch gets weaker fast.
How big is the market for AI venture capital?
The simple answer: huge, and still getting bigger. NVCA and PitchBook data show U.S. AI and machine learning venture deal value hit $222.1 billion in 2025, up from $108.6 billion in 2024. AI represented 65.4% of all U.S. VC deal value in 2025 and 39.4% of total deal count. That's a wild level of concentration.
The volume is big too. U.S. AI and ML companies logged 5,793 VC deals in 2025, versus 5,278 in 2024. That tells you this isn’t just a few monster foundation-model rounds distorting the picture. There’s real breadth across the stack. It runs from developer tooling and training data to agentic applications and workflow software.
That’s the structural reason Chemistry exists. When AI becomes the center of venture, founders want investors who actually understand where technical moats are forming and where a flashy wrapper won’t hold. Generalist money can still win deals. But specialist judgment matters more when everyone is pitching an AI company and only some of them will become enduring software businesses.
Can Chemistry Ventures stay selective at $500M?
That’s the real question now.
Chemistry Ventures has the resume, the early momentum, and now the LP demand to build a durable AI-focused venture franchise. But the next signal won’t be the fund size itself. It’ll be whether the firm can keep making sharp early bets and keep showing up like a small partnership after taking on a much larger pool of capital.
Read how Rocketlane secured strategic backing from Atlassian Ventures to accelerate Rocketlane Nitro, its AI-powered execution platform for automating customer implementations and professional services delivery.
FAQ
- What is Chemistry Ventures raising now?
Chemistry Ventures is raising a $500 million second fund. The SEC filing for Chemistry Ventures Fund II, L.P. was dated June 25, 2026, and reporting published on July 7, 2026 said the vehicle was already oversubscribed and expected to close soon. - How does Chemistry Ventures work?
Chemistry Ventures works as an early-stage VC firm that leads seed and Series A investments in AI and software startups. Its model is unusually concentrated. All 3 founding partners support each portfolio company, and it backs founders from the first check through later rounds. - Who are the founders of Chemistry Ventures?
Chemistry Ventures was founded by Mark Goldberg, Ethan Kurzweil, and Kristina Shen in 2024. Before launching the firm, Goldberg was a partner at Index Ventures, Kurzweil was a managing partner at Bessemer, and Shen was a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz after an earlier run at Bessemer. - Is Chemistry Ventures an AI startup fund or a general VC firm?
It’s best described as an early-stage VC firm with a strong AI focus rather than a broad generalist fund. The firm invests in AI infrastructure and applications, and that focus lines up with a market where U.S. AI and ML startups captured $222.1 billion in VC deal value during 2025.
