The House Fund Research
Overview
The House Fund (house.vc, thehouse.fund) is a pre-seed and early-stage venture capital fund exclusively focused on UC Berkeley-affiliated founders — alumni, current students, faculty, and affiliates. Founded in 2016 by Jeremy Fiance following his graduation from UC Berkeley, the fund has grown from a $6M debut vehicle to over $330M in assets under management across three flagship funds and a dedicated BAIR Grant program. It has backed more than 100 startups, generated 7 unicorns, recorded 20+ exits, and helped portfolio companies raise over $5.2B in follow-on capital.
Investment Thesis
The House Fund's thesis is straightforward: pair Berkeley founders with unparalleled resources and they become unstoppable. The fund is community-first rather than capital-first, built from the bottom of the Cal ecosystem upward rather than as a top-down investor seeking to deploy capital into it. The partners do not chase hype trends; instead they lean on UC Berkeley's concentration of world-class AI researchers and faculty to identify where technology is actually headed, then back the bold founders commercializing those insights.
A defining initiative is AI@The House — a formal partnership with seven of Berkeley's top AI researchers (Ion Stoica, Michael Jordan, Joseph Gonzalez, Kurt Keutzer, Trevor Darrell, Ken Goldberg, and Pieter Abbeel) to create the most concentrated AI startup ecosystem in the world. Berkeley, home to Databricks, Perplexity, and Anyscale, has become a global AI hub, and The House Fund is at its center.
Stage Focus
The fund invests at two tiers:
- Pre-seed: Up to $1,000,000. Typically the first institutional check, often before the product exists.
- Early-stage / Seed: Up to $2,000,000. Likes to lead or co-lead Seed rounds; also participates in Seed and Series A syndicates.
The firm self-describes as investing "at inception stage" — meaning it regularly writes checks before other VCs are willing to engage.
Check Size
Typical investments range from $100K to $2M, with a sweet spot around $500K–$1M at pre-seed. The NFX Signal profile for Jeremy Fiance lists a sweet spot of $500K and a range of $100K–$1M.
Lead Tendency
The House Fund prefers to be the first institutional investor and will lead or co-lead seed rounds. At the pre-seed stage, it is happy to anchor a syndicate or participate alone. At Series A and beyond, its Managing Partner Zachary Hargreaves (ex-Founders Fund) handles later-stage follow-ons.
Portfolio Highlights
The fund has an exceptional track record for a Berkeley-specific vehicle:
- Databricks — led to a $43B+ valuation and strategic acquirer of Mosaic ML and MosaicML.
- Perplexity — AI-powered answer engine; post-Series B unicorn.
- Superhuman — fastest email product ever made, backed at inception.
- Anyscale — Ray framework commercialization (acquired by Databricks).
- Ayar Labs — optical interconnect unicorn; raised $155M at $1B+ valuation.
- PsiQuantum — fault-tolerant quantum computing; received $620M from Australian and Queensland governments.
- LMArena — AI model evaluation platform spun out of Berkeley; raised $150M Series A in January 2026 at $1.7B valuation (co-investors: a16z, Felicis, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed).
- Silna Health — AI-powered prior authorization platform; raised $27M Seed + Series A.
- Bezi — collaborative 3D design platform; raised $13M Series A led by Benchmark.
- Moonware — AI-driven airport ground operations automation; raised $7M Seed.
- Savvy Wealth — AI wealth management platform; raised $26.5M Series A.
Notable exits:
- Deepscale — acquired by Tesla
- Determined AI — acquired by HPE
- Gradescope — acquired by Turnitin
- Iota Biosciences — acquired by Astellas
- Blitz — acquired by Discord
- tbh — acquired by Facebook
- Nefeli Networks — acquired by Cloudflare
- Elph — acquired by Brex
- Ambi Robotics — acquired (supply chain robotics)
- Distributed Systems — acquired by Coinbase
Team
- Jeremy Fiance, Founder & Managing Partner: Graduated from UC Berkeley in 2016 and immediately founded The House Fund. As a student, co-launched Kairos Society Berkeley and Free Ventures, seeding 50+ startups that raised $50M before he graduated. Has led the fund from a $6M debut to $330M+ AUM.
- Zachary Hargreaves, Managing Partner: UC Berkeley EECS alum. Joined The House Fund in October 2024. Previously an investor at Founders Fund (contributed to SpaceX and Stemcentrx investments). Also contributed to NASA's Mars rover landing project and co-founded Vires Aeronautics, one of the first VC-backed aerospace startups.
- Sydney Thomas, Venture Partner: Also Founder and General Partner of Symphonic Capital, which invests in companies making life better for the 99%. MBA from UC Berkeley Haas. Board member of BLCK VC and the City of Oakland's Public Safety and Services Commission.
- David Bloom, Principal: Works on early-stage deals and portfolio support.
- Adithya Iyengar, Principal: Works on sourcing and supporting Berkeley-affiliated founders.
- Sean Whitney, General Counsel: Manages legal affairs for the firm and portfolio.
- Marc Morgenstern, Mentor at Large: Provides senior advisory support.
AI Faculty Partners (academic advisors, not investors):
- Joseph Gonzalez, Ion Stoica, Michael Jordan, Kurt Keutzer, Trevor Darrell, Ken Goldberg
BAIR Grant Program
In April 2025, The House Fund raised a $12M dedicated fund in 7 days to support top Berkeley AI researchers in response to federal research funding cuts. The program provides up to $250,000 investment and up to $600,000 in free US compute infrastructure per startup. This underscores the firm's commitment to the Berkeley AI research-to-commercialization pipeline.
AI Accelerator
The House AI Accelerator is a highly selective, hands-on program for UC Berkeley-affiliated founders building AI companies. In addition to $1M in funding, each startup receives up to $750K in AI-specific perks and access to free office space. A Startup Showcase is planned for September 2026.
Decision Process
The fund operates as a tight partnership (Jeremy Fiance and Zachary Hargreaves as co-Managing Partners, Sydney Thomas as Venture Partner). Decisions appear to be made by the partnership rather than a formal investment committee. The firm emphasizes speed and directness with founders. Personalized Demo Days (curated investor meetings) replace the typical batch demo day format.
Geographic Focus
Primarily Berkeley/SF Bay Area — all investments must have at least one founder who is a UC Berkeley alumni, faculty member, current student, or affiliate. There is no explicit geographic restriction beyond the UC Berkeley affiliation requirement, so portfolio companies are headquartered across the US.
Fund History
- Fund I (2016): $6M debut fund
- Fund II (2019): $44M sophomore fund
- Fund III (2023): $115M, with stated focus on AI startups
- BAIR Grant (2025): $12M dedicated AI researcher fund
- Total AUM: $330M+ as of October 2023