SignalFire announces $900M fundraise, XIRs, & AI to help founders

AI has the power to transform how venture capital is invested. The explosive growth of company formation inside and outside of traditional startup hubs makes it impossible to keep human eyes on everything. We’ve been building for this future for 10 years, developing our proprietary AI data platform Beacon to give SignalFire a fundamental competitive advantage. By spotting high-potential founders and companies hiring the best talent, Beacon gives SignalFire early access to investment opportunities. AI can’t tell you who to fund, but it can absolutely tell you who to talk to.

AI also lets SignalFire scale the assistance it provides to portfolio companies. We are on a mission to shatter the cliche that VCs aren’t helpful. It’s a cop-out that lets investors off the hook for not putting in work alongside their portfolio founders, and it leads those founders to not ask for help from investors that are equipped and excited to provide it. That’s why before SignalFire launched in 2013, we started by interviewing 500 founders about what would actually be helpful. They said “recruiting assistance at scale” so that’s what we built.

We’ve fine-tuned Beacon over the past decade to track 495 million employees and 80 million companies. This lets Beacon find our portfolio companies the best candidates to hire for any role who are also the most likely to leave their current job. Our AI talent tools are the center of our “Portfolio-Support-as-a-Service” (“PSaaS”) platform. That also includes our in-house talent team that helps portfolio companies develop their hiring strategy and fill their most important positions, 200 skill-building workshops a year, and an in-house team of data scientists, PR experts, and go-to-market leaders.

But in addition to help from technology tools and functional specialists, we believe human guidance from experienced operators is an invaluable key to a startup’s success.

So today, alongside the announcement of SignalFire closing our $900 million fundraise across our Seed, Breakout, XIR, and Opportunities funds, we’re publicly announcing the SignalFire Executive-In-Residence (“XIR”) program.

The XIR program pairs deeply experienced tech industry leaders from the firm’s Advisor Network with high-potential portfolio companies. We’re excited to announce that some of the first XIRs include*:

• Doug Merritt, former CEO of Splunk ($SPLK)
• Frank Williams, co-founder and former CEO of Evolent Health ($EVH)
• Tom Peterson, co-founder and former COO of Evolent Health ($EVH)
• Alex Hooshmand, co-founder and former CPO of Blue Kai (Acquired by $ORCL)
• David Klements, co-founder and former CEO of Qualifacts (Acquired by Warburg Pincus)
• Jack Huffard, co-founder and former president of Tenable ($TENB)

From fundraising and hiring to product and sales, these accomplished executives will help their respective companies see around corners and go further, faster. Startups in the XIR program will also benefit from our entire PSaaS program throughout their journey.

We want founders to come to expect more value from VCs than just their capital. It’s not enough to have made some smart investments in the past and offer to make a few intros. Founders deserve VCs that have built tangible programs that deliver measurable improvements to company growth.

With the $900 million in new capital, SignalFire is doubling down on the sectors where we have deep expertise. We’re building powerhouse teams in core verticals like healthcare, cybersecurity, and developer tools while seeking out opportunities for AI to revolutionize these industries and others like enterprise infrastructure, fintech, and consumer. We’ll be publishing our investment theses to create a dialogue of ideas with founders, and using Beacon to get early looks at new companies in these spaces. For our startup trend reports, founders guides, and event invites, you can sign up here!

Technology constantly evolves. You wouldn’t start the same company or run it the same way as you would have 20 years ago. We believe venture should evolve too. With AI tools, in-house experts, and experienced XIRs, SignalFire is engineered to help drive your growth.

You can read more about our news in Axios Pro Rata.

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*SignalFire may engage Affiliate Advisors, Retained Advisors, and other consultants as listed above to provide their expertise on a formal or ad hoc basis. They are not employed by SignalFire and do not provide investment advisory services to clients on behalf of SignalFire. For more information on their specific roles, please contact us. Portfolio Company Endorsements: Certain portfolio company founders listed above have not received any compensation for this feedback and did not invest in a SignalFire fund. Please refer to our website for additional disclosures.