Untapped Ventures

Untapped Ventures

Untapped Ventures is a Los Angeles-based pre-seed and seed venture firm run by founder and general partner George Bandarian. It positions itself as "the only AI VC where 100+ Enterprise CEO LPs become early customers, strategic advisors, and industry connectors." Fund I is closed; the thesis page refers to positioning Fund II to capture the Autonomous Economy before it becomes consensus.

Investment Thesis

The firm's single organizing idea is the "Autonomous Economy" (AE): a world where billions of AI agents (digital workers) and billions of robots (physical workers) execute economic work end to end and securely transact, with no human in the execution loop. Untapped says most AI funds back anything that uses AI, while it only backs AE-native companies where AI removes the human from the loop. The thesis is built on four pillars: autonomous intelligent agents (LLMs, multi-agent systems, agentic workflows, service-as-software); physical autonomy and robotics (computer vision, sensor fusion, edge compute, logistics, manufacturing, agriculture); secure economic infrastructure (web3 and smart contracts, identity and permissions, audit and compliance rails); and autonomous enterprise operations (agentic process automation, finance and insurance, procurement, compliance and security ops). Its "AE Value Stack" runs from autonomous experiences at the top, through a machine workforce layer, an autonomy control plane (identity, policy-as-code, evals, audit receipts, kill-switches, agent FinOps), and agent runtime and orchestration, down to models, data, inference infrastructure and energy-aware compute. The firm's FAQ also lists Native AI, Frontier AI, Embodied AI, Deep Tech AI and AI convergence as focus areas, and its insights page covers agentic infrastructure, embodied AI, AI for defense, AI plus life sciences, material science, neurotech and energy.

Stage, Check Size and Lead Tendency

Pre-seed and seed. Initial checks run $500K to $2M, with follow-on reserved for portfolio companies executing at pace. The portfolio page says it co-leads and follows rounds with roughly $1M+ checks, while the FAQ says it leads, co-leads and follows, and leads especially at pre-seed. Treat lead tendency as "both". It will back solo technical founders, first-time founders and pre-traction teams. Founders worldwide are considered, but the company must be a Delaware C corp. The stated process is a pitch form, an intro call with a partner, a deep dive, an optional technical review, then a decision and terms, with a reply typically within a week. Board seats only when helpful.

Portfolio and Recent Activity

The site claims 35 companies invested (Tracxn counts 39 as of May 2026, with only one new investment in the prior twelve months, which suggests a slower recent pace or a gap between funds). Named companies include xAI, Extropic (thermodynamic computing; $14.1M seed led by Kindred Ventures, announced March 2024), Liquid AI, You.com, Harper (AI-native insurance brokerage; Series A led by Emergence Capital in early 2026, total funding $47M), Lemurian Labs ($9M seed in October 2023 led by Oval Park Capital, then a $28M Series A in December 2025), Nexxa.ai (specialized AI for industrial companies), EON Systems, Scott AI, Maven AGI, Sluicebox, Herd, Radicle, Piris Labs (YC S25, seed led by Link Ventures), SiteVue (Nashville factory-floor camera AI, announced August 2026) and ScienceIO (acquired). Co-investors shown on the site include a16z, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, Seven Seven Six, Goodwater, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Antler, Emergence Capital, Georgian, Day One Ventures, AMD, Kindred Ventures, Buckley Ventures, HOF Capital, Julian Capital, Marque Ventures, OSS Capital and Weekend Fund.

Team and Decision Process

George Bandarian is the decision-maker and public face. Before Untapped he was President and CEO of AMI, a B2B enterprise software company he sold in an all-cash exit in 2018. He hosts The Agentic podcast and keynotes events such as Tiger 21, YPO and EO. Hamlet Azarian is a venture partner and growth advisor; Jonah Sklar is a technical advisor; Tripp Doll and Ulises Ceja are venture associates; Shant Meguerditchian runs marketing. The structure reads as a solo-GP firm with a small support team and a large LP community that contributes to sourcing, diligence and portfolio support.

Founder Preferences and Value-Add

Untapped says it backs founders who see a category before it exists: rare domain credibility combined with AI-first thinking, rebuilding an industry from first principles. Strong signals are founder quality, execution speed and an early technical edge. Typical backgrounds are technical founders with ML or engineering depth, former FAANG or AI-lab operators, and people with an earned secret about their market. Post-investment support includes monthly CEO masterminds, go-to-market and sales strategy, fundraising prep and investor introductions, product strategy, and the 100+ enterprise-CEO LP network (the Core 100), whose members can act as design partners and customers. Founder testimonials come from Extropic and Nexxa.ai.

Geographic Focus

Based in Los Angeles; invests globally in Delaware C corps. Portfolio spans the US and Canada (Lemurian Labs is in Toronto).

Gaps

Fund II size, AUM and the portfolio's exact stage and date per company are not published. Stage is recorded only for companies where a source names the round with Untapped.