Zero Knowledge Ventures Research
Investment Thesis
Zero Knowledge Ventures (ZKV) is a San Francisco first-check fund that describes itself as investing from the idea stage through seed. Its homepage says "Investing $250-500k from idea stage through seed," and its search-engine description says it backs "the most ambitious founders" with first checks. Its LinkedIn description says it invests in US and Israeli companies using mathematics, cryptography and AI. The name and the firm's early history come from crypto and zero-knowledge proofs, but the current portfolio has widened well beyond crypto into defense, space, energy, robotics, biotech, payments and AI infrastructure.
Stage Focus
Pre-idea, pre-seed and seed. The firm writes the first institutional check, and the portfolio page shows it sitting alongside much larger funds that came in later or at the same round (a16z, General Catalyst, Sequoia, Lux, Accel, Valor, Y Combinator, Altimeter, Khosla, CRV, Menlo).
Check Size
$250,000 to $500,000 per company, as stated on the homepage. Third-party sources describe roughly $500K checks.
Lead Tendency
Unclear. The portfolio page lists a co-investor next to each company, and several entries list only ZKV (Algorio, VOTR, Phygitals), which suggests ZKV sometimes backs a company alone at the earliest stage. Lead tendency is recorded as unknown.
Recent Activity
The portfolio page shows 2026 as the most common year, with deals in Open Reserve (bank for AI agents, co-investors a16z and Jump), Orbital (data centers in orbit, Antler and Wayfinder), NOX Metals, Torus, Warhound, Silicon Dreams, FinalDose, Adialante, Canos, Finnrick, Opacity, Agentcard, Mochatrade, VOTR, Phygitals, Lyra and Turnkey Robo. CB Insights lists the latest investment as Open Reserve, a seed round dated June 9, 2026, and counts 34 investments in total. The firm appears to be actively deploying. Fund size is not disclosed.
Portfolio Highlights
The page lists 31 companies. Notable names include Chaos Industries (radar for drone detection, Valor and Accel), Warhound (working dogs for defense, Lux and Sequoia), Descope (login and auth, Lightspeed and GGV), Marathon Fusion (fusion fuel and isotopes, 1517 Fund), EtherFi (crypto finance, CoinFund and Bullish), Cedar (cross-border B2B payments, QED and Lattice), Castle (mobile game creation, Khosla) and Pixeltable (multimodal AI data, Liquid2 and South Park Commons). The page also shows a Backed by strip: Endurance, a16z, Y Combinator, Liquid 2, SV Angel, Fundora, Inception, Draper, CyberStarts and Cerca Partners. These are shown as backers of the firm, not as portfolio companies, and were left out of the portfolio list.
Team
- Nicky Montana, General Partner: Founder and CEO of Balto, a Y Combinator-backed sports-betting platform sold to FuboTV. Thiel Fellow. Based in San Francisco; the site lists his email and X account.
- Third-party aggregators also name Idan Sugarman (General Partner) and Kwame Eyiah, but the firm's own site does not list them, so they were not added.
Decision Process
The site shows one named investor, so decisions look like they run through a single GP. This is an inference and not stated anywhere. Decision timeline and warm-intro requirements are unknown.
Founder Preferences
The firm's tagline favors ambitious, technical founders working at the idea stage. Portfolio founders cluster in deep tech, defense, infrastructure and AI-adjacent finance. The firm does not publish an anti-thesis.
Geographic Focus
US and Israel according to LinkedIn. The portfolio also includes companies serving India (Mochatrade), Brazil (Codexa), and Eastern Europe and Africa (Cedar). Third-party sources list a New York address for an earlier version of the firm; the current site says San Francisco.
Gaps
Fund size and AUM are not disclosed. Stage at investment and investment dates per company are not on the site, so none are recorded beyond the year shown. Portfolio entries come from the firm's own page.