Jake Seid

As AI workloads eat up global computing supply, DRAM prices are surging like never before—creating major challenges for teams trying to plan out their data center spend. One of my portfolio companies, Mext, is addressing the largest cost component in the datacenter: server memory (DRAM). From being on the board of Redis for the last twelve years, I’ve learned a lot about the various aspects of this problem and approaches to solving them. Mext found a breakthrough, using new AI techniques, for dramatically reducing the amount of server-DRAM required to run applications, all while maintaining performance. It intelligently manages the server’s memory, keeping hot pages (i.e., those in use by applications) in fast DRAM and offloading cold pages (i.e., those less used) to a much less expensive memory tier (e.g., NVMe Flash). Key to the approach is ensuring cold memory pages that are about to be accessed by an application are back in DRAM before the application needs them or notices that they were gone. This is done without modifications to the application or the OS – so it can run in the cloud or on-premise. Mext thus allows applications to either run using less DRAM or keep their DRAM footprint but do more with it. They're hosting a webinar along with Fred Weber (former CTO of AMD) on Jan 22nd at 10am pacific time. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/gXe9GCeE

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Honored and excited to partner with Drew Baglino and the incredible team at Heron Power as they re-imagine the electric grid for the modern world. Power in America is not zero sum. We deserve access to cheap and abundant electricity and we should win the AI race. And we must build the capacity to manufacture critical technology here at home. When faced with existential challenges, we deploy technology against them. And we win.

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I’ve known David Meister for years and backed him at Sydecar, so I’ve seen his ability to build through complexity. Axiom Trust is taking on one of the most outdated parts of wealth infrastructure, trust administration, by pairing a regulated trust company with AI-native workflows. We're proud to invest again and congrats to the team on the launch!

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At CRV, we’ve been fortunate to partner with some of the most visionary founders reshaping the future of cybersecurity over the past five decades. From cloud-native data protection to developer-first security and AI-driven detection, our portfolio reflects the breadth and depth of innovation happening in the industry today. Companies like Cyera, Cribl, Astrix Security, Tailscale, and Vega (among many others) are tackling the hardest problems facing CISOs and developers — from securing non-human identities, to modernizing log pipelines, to making zero-trust networking effortless. What’s exciting is not just the individual companies, but the ecosystem effect: each is building in complementary areas, and together they’re advancing how enterprises secure data, infrastructure, and applications in an AI-powered world. Cybersecurity has never been more mission-critical, and the next decade will see even greater disruption as AI, automation, and new architectures redefine what’s possible. We’re proud to support founders leading that charge.🚀 If you’re building in cyber, we’d love to connect!

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We're excited to lead the Series-A round of Cloudburst Technologies along with prior investors including Strategic Cyber Ventures (SCV), CoinFund, Coinbase (Coinbase Ventures), Bloccelerate VC, and IQT (In‑Q‑Tel). Operating at the intersection of #AI and crypto-related social media data, Cloudburst Technologies is redefining how the industry approaches risk and intelligence. While most blockchain analytics are limited to on-chain activity, Cloudburst focuses on the crucial off-chain ecosystem. By tracking social sentiment, fraud networks, illicit actors, scams, and emerging narratives, they deliver real-time intelligence and predictive market insights. This comprehensive approach gives regulators, law enforcement, exchanges, investors, and enterprises a proactive edge in spotting new trends and combating crypto-enabled financial crime. The Cloudburst platform is powered by proprietary AI and data science models. It leverages millions of off-chain data points, spanning everything from Telegram and Discord groups to regulatory filings and breaking news. This capability enables clients to detect emerging fraud, enhance KYC/KYT workflows with social media intelligence, quantify reputational and financial risk, and improve investment strategies with behavioral data. Cloudburst is already trusted by major crypto exchanges, compliance teams, and government agencies. With this latest funding, Cloudburst will expand its AI and data science teams, accelerate product development, and scale globally to serve financial institutions, regulators, and exchanges. More here: Coindesk: https://lnkd.in/dDxQBKMh Newswire: https://lnkd.in/dCRughTc Ventureburn: https://lnkd.in/dmP4NzJz

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Voice is a super interesting modality right now - maybe the first modality we're seeing move to open source models across a number of scale ups / enterprises. Reliability concerns, high costs, and open source model performance are pushing engineers to do their own fine tuning vs. relying on third-party vendors of proprietary models. Many of these orgs have already been collecting their own first-party data and now with third-party vendors like Extrian, David AI, etc they can train really high quality models. RL has been insanely hyped, but it's been unclear how long it will take scale ups and enterprises to actually lean in. Voice AI might be hitting that inflection point faster than expected.

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At Lookout Ventures, we don't only invest in AI. We don't only invest in security and compliance. And we don't only invest in DC. But we sure like it when those worlds come together. Announcing the seed round in Trustible that we're excited to lead. We were super impressed with what Gerald Kierce-Iturrioz and Andrew Gamino-Cheong had built at Trustible and their understanding of what is needed for enterprises to responsibly adopt AI. AI will never scale unless orgs can properly manage risk and comply with emerging regulations. It can't scale without Trust(ible). https://lnkd.in/ecjKvMJP

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