Vela Partners

Vela Partners Research

About Vela Partners

Vela Partners is the world's first AI-only venture capital fund, founded in 2016 by ex-Googlers Yigit Ihlamur and Fuat Alican. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the firm describes itself as an "AI-native quant VC" that uses proprietary machine learning models and AI-driven evaluation tools to identify and back exceptional AI founders at the seed stage. The firm has deployed capital across three funds, with Fund II currently active. With 50+ portfolio companies and 10+ exits — including acquisitions by Meta, Apple, LG, Dropbox, and F5 — Vela has built a strong track record in early-stage AI investing.

Investment Thesis

Vela Partners invests exclusively in AI and AI-enabled startups. Their thesis centers on finding founders with "100x return potential" who are building category-defining products at the intersection of AI and high-impact industries. The firm believes that quantitative methods applied to founder evaluation can consistently outperform human-only assessment. Vela has built a proprietary "Vela AI Suite" that scans 300+ early-stage companies weekly, analyzing founder backgrounds and product viability using large language models. Their models demonstrate a 10-20x improvement over baseline success prediction rates.

Key investment focus areas include:

• Agentic AI and Autonomous Systems: Software agents, robotics, automation
• Foundation Models and Scientific AI: Novel AI research, drug discovery, quantum computing
• AI for Industry: Vertical AI applications across healthcare, education, logistics, marketing
• AI Infrastructure and Data: Developer tools, data quality, security, identity

Stage Focus and Check Size

Vela Partners focuses exclusively on the seed stage. Their typical check size is $100K–$500K, calibrated by their proprietary assessment of a company's probability of outlier success. This makes Vela an early-stage catalytic investor rather than a large institutional lead — though they do lead rounds (notably leading Bito's $5.7M seed extension in May 2025). The small check size allows them to build a diversified portfolio of 50+ AI companies while maintaining conviction-weighted sizing.

Decision Process and Timeline

Vela has an unusually fast decision timeline — one of their key differentiated value propositions:

• Initial decision: Minutes (via AI-assisted screening)
• Soft commitment: 2–7 days

The process involves Yigit Ihlamur taking the first founder call, followed by co-founder Fuat Alican conducting a rigorous 45–60 minute devil's advocate session. This dual-founder evaluation ensures both quantitative signal and qualitative conviction before committing. No warm introduction is required; founders can reach out directly.

Research and Oxford University Partnership

One of Vela's most distinctive attributes is its active research organization. Vela operates what it calls the venture capital industry's largest active research program, in collaboration with the University of Oxford. Key facts:

• 50+ published papers and multiple patents
• 80+ researchers across Vela Research and Oxford
• 30 Oxford interns annually

Recent published work:

• Decision GPT (March 2024): LLM-based decision framework showing 10x improvement in VC evaluation precision
• SSFF (Startup Success Forecasting Framework) (June 2024): AI agent that evaluates startups 5x faster and 100x cheaper than human analysts while maintaining quality
• VCBench: A public AGI benchmark with 9,000 anonymized founder profiles
• Open-source libraries: GPTree, Random Rule Forest (RRF), Reasoned Rule Mining (RRM), Policy Induction

In 2026, Vela has been actively publishing insights on AI infrastructure trends, graph databases for agent memory, and quantitative VC methodology.

Portfolio and Exits

Vela's 50+ portfolio companies span four categories. Notable companies and exits include:

Exits (10+):

• Limitless (AI wearable pendant) → acquired by Meta (December 2025)
• Bear Robotics (restaurant robots) → acquired by LG
• WaveOne (video compression AI) → acquired by Apple
• Golden (knowledge graphs) → acquired by ComplyAdvantage
• Promoted (ad ranking systems) → acquired by Dropbox
• LeakSignal (application security) → acquired by F5
• Vartana (sales financing) → acquired by Capchase (June 2025)
• OwnId (authentication platform) → acquired by Unico
• Jobox (labor marketplace) → acquired by Talus Pay

Active Portfolio Highlights:

• HiVerge: Google DeepMind alumni building algorithm discovery engine; $5M seed (Sep 2025)
• Cartken: Autonomous delivery robotics; $22.5M raised
• Bito: AI code review platform; $5.7M seed extension led by Vela (May 2025)
• Nominal: Accounting automation via generative AI; $9.2M raised
• Phaidra: AI for industrial operations
• Cerby: Identity security for non-SSO applications
• Meditopia: Mental wellness platform
• Pensive: AI-assisted grading for higher education; $6.8M seed (Feb 2026)
• Interviewing.io: Technical interview practice platform
• BlueQubit: Quantum computing software

Team

Yigit Ihlamur — Co-founder, General Partner Computer Science degree from the University of Oxford (AI specialization). Former Google engineer. Born in Turkey, started coding at age 11, national chess competitor (top 10 ranking). Leads the first founder call for all investments. Serves on multiple portfolio company boards. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yihlamur/

Fuat Alican — Co-founder, General Partner, Chief Investment Officer Background in multinational banking at Citigroup and Salomon Brothers, with a focus on the ICT sector. Former Vice Chairman and Chief Strategist of Netsis Software. Education in economic and administrative sciences (Millsaps College). Leads the devil's advocate evaluation session after Yigit's first call. Also a researcher with publications on open review platforms.

Murat Ihlamur — Partner Based in Turkey, affiliated with Kuika (no-code/low-code app development platform, a Vela portfolio company).

Geographic Focus

Primarily US-based investments with strong SF Bay Area presence. The Oxford research partnership and team presence in Ghana (AI engineers) suggests broader international engagement. No stated geographic restriction — the AI-only filter is the primary selection criterion rather than geography.

Fund Status and Activity

Fund II is currently being deployed. The firm has secured backing from Tier-1 VCs and claims top decile returns. Activity pace has been measured — approximately 1–2 new investments in the most recent period (2025–2026), suggesting selective deployment in later fund life. The most recent confirmed investment is Pensive (February 2026).