Forward Future Capital Research
Overview
Forward Future Capital is the investing arm of Forward Future, the AI media company founded by Matthew Berman. Forward Future runs The Future Today daily newsletter (80,000+ readers), a YouTube channel with 600K+ subscribers, and the weekly Forward Future Live show (25K+ weekly viewers). The capital page describes the fund as making "early-stage investments in the infrastructure behind AI and scientific discovery" and frames the move as: "We've been talking about the future being built. Now we're funding it." The firm does not publish a fund size, check size, or a named investment team beyond the media company's founders. The firm has an LP-gated area (Performance and LP Updates behind a password), which implies it raises or reports to outside LPs, but no fund vehicle details are public.
Investment Thesis
The public thesis is infrastructure for AI agents and for AI-driven science. The four disclosed investments split into two themes: agent infrastructure (a publishing layer and an evaluation framework) and AI for science (autonomous hypothesis-and-experiment systems, and autonomous discovery of semiconductor materials). The common thread is practical tooling that agents use or that agents run, rather than consumer apps or foundation models. The portfolio also reflects the founder's audience: builders and open-source agent communities he covers daily.
Stage Focus
Stated as early-stage. Discovered Materials disclosed a $9M seed led by Lightspeed with Y Combinator and Peak XV participating; Forward Future Capital's role in that round is not stated publicly. Other holdings are early or stealth. Stage preferences are therefore inferred as pre-seed and seed, with low confidence.
Check Size
Not disclosed. Left null.
Lead Tendency
Unknown. The Discovered Materials round was led by Lightspeed, which suggests at least some participation as a non-lead, but this is not confirmed.
Recent Activity
The capital page lists four current investments, and the site is live as of October 2026, indicating the fund is active. The page was not dated. Discovered Materials announced its seed in August 2026. here.now reports powering more than 500,000 published sites.
Portfolio Highlights
- Interactive Intelligence (stealth): infrastructure for AI systems to form hypotheses, run experiments, interpret results and learn from what happens next.
- here.now: a publishing layer for agents; turns a site, app or report into a live URL in seconds; 500,000+ sites published.
- harbor: open-source framework for evaluating agents in sandboxed environments, from the makers of terminal-bench.
- Discovered Materials: AI agents plus physical experimentation to discover new semiconductor materials; $9M seed (Lightspeed, YC, Peak XV); open-sourced Material Discovery Bench.
No exits are known.
Team
Matthew Berman founded Forward Future and previously founded Sonar Technologies, an enterprise messaging company acquired by Marchex in December 2019 for $12.5M in cash and stock (plus up to $1.5M contingent). He spent nearly two years at 500 Startups before Sonar. Nick Wentz is Forward Future's co-founder. The firm's contact is [email protected]. Whether Berman and Wentz are the investing decision-makers is not stated on the capital page.
Decision Process
Not disclosed. Probably a small, founder-led process, but this is an inference.
Founder Preferences
Not stated. The portfolio suggests technical founders building open-source or agent-native infrastructure, and scientists pairing AI with lab work.
Geographic Focus
Not stated. Berman is based in San Francisco, and portfolio companies appear to be US-oriented, but no geographic mandate is published.
Gaps
Performance, LP updates and the full portfolio page are password-gated. Fund size, vintage, check sizes, team beyond Forward Future's founders, and the firm's role in each round are unknown. A founder pitching this firm should treat it as a media-platform-backed angel-style fund with strong distribution to AI builders, focused on agent and AI-for-science infrastructure.