Small World Capital Research
Overview
Small World Capital (SWC) describes itself as a collection of vehicles that aims to accelerate the growth of humanity by investing in startups. The firm's website is a single page with a link to an invite-only investor data room and an IR email, so almost everything below comes from third-party sources: Tiger Gao's LinkedIn profile, a LinkedIn post about the AMI round, PitchBook's public profile preview, and press coverage of recent rounds. Confidence on specifics is therefore moderate.
Investment Thesis
Tiger Gao, a co-founder and general partner, describes SWC as a NYC and SF-based venture growth investment firm with over $100M in AUM that invests in proven winners at the growth stage. In his post about Advanced Machine Intelligence the firm says it is backing some of the most defining companies of this AI supercycle. The portfolio leans toward AI labs and infrastructure, developer tooling, defense and fintech software.
Stage Focus
Growth stage is the stated focus. PitchBook lists the firm as founded in 2024, based in New York (10012), with 36 investments, 33 portfolio companies and 5 exits. Several of the deals are rounds into companies that already have revenue (Coast, Lovable, Harmonic, DeepInfra), alongside very large early rounds in AI labs (AMI Labs, a $1.03B seed round).
Check Size
No check sizes are disclosed. With roughly $100M in AUM and a 36-deal history, checks are likely small relative to the round sizes, which suggests participation alongside larger leads rather than leading. This is an inference, not a disclosed fact.
Lead Tendency
Unknown. In the October 2026 Coast $35M round, led by Thomvest Ventures, SWC joined as a new investor with Intuit Ventures. In the KOHO $35M growth round, led by Thomvest Ventures, SWC participated. In the AMI Labs round, the lead investors were Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions. Every round found had another lead, but the sample is small.
Recent Activity
- Oct 2026: Coast, $35M growth round led by Thomvest Ventures, SWC a new investor.
- Sep 2026: Mach Industries (aerospace and defense), per PitchBook.
- May 2026: Retro (drug discovery), per PitchBook.
- Apr 2026: DeepInfra, per PitchBook.
- Mar 2026: Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI Labs, Yann LeCun's world-model startup), $1.03B round at a $3.5B pre-money valuation; SWC backed it.
- Mar 2026: Nscale, per PitchBook.
- Dec 2025: San Francisco Compute and Lovable, per PitchBook.
- Nov 2025: Harmonic, per PitchBook.
PitchBook shows two exits in the visible preview, SpaceX (IPO, June 2026) and SpaceXAI (February 2026). These come from the preview only and were not confirmed from a second source.
Portfolio Highlights
Coast (fleet spend and financial software), Mach Industries (defense), Retro (drug discovery), DeepInfra (inference infrastructure), AMI Labs (world models), Nscale (AI compute), San Francisco Compute, Lovable (AI app builder), Harmonic (AI math and software), KOHO (Canadian fintech). PitchBook's co-investor list (616 co-investors) names with Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, 1789 Capital and NVIDIA.
Team
- Tiger Gao, Co-Founder & General Partner: Princeton class of 2021, previously an investor at Apax Digital, based between NYC and SF. PitchBook lists two professionals at the firm; the second is not named publicly.
Decision Process
Not disclosed. A two-person team suggests a partnership model with fast decisions, but this is not confirmed.
Founder Preferences
Not stated. The portfolio favors companies with proven traction or exceptional technical founders at scale, especially in AI, defense and developer infrastructure.
Geographic Focus
Offices in New York and San Francisco. Portfolio spans the US, Europe (AMI Labs in France, Nscale in the UK) and Canada (KOHO).
Gaps
The website gives no portfolio, team or thesis page, so the portfolio list is assembled from PitchBook's public preview of 10 of 36 investments plus press. The portfolio read of swc.xyz returned only the firm logo and the Small World Coffee affiliate icon. The firm is associated with Small World Coffee, but that is a related business, not a portfolio company.