Best Pre-Seed Security & Cybersecurity + Biotech & Life Sciences Investors 2026

Artificial Intelligence will disrupt every industry. Flying Fish invests in companies where AI/ML serves as foundational technology across three pillars: Applied Intelligence (AI transforming enterprise workflows), Foundational AI & Infrastructure (core ML tooling and training), and Hard Sciences (AI accelerating biology, materials science, and drug discovery).

Backing transformative founders building exceptional companies across all sectors

The best companies will be built by technical founders - engineers, researchers, and scientists who have experienced a problem viscerally and are compelled to solve it. We invest in tools, platforms, and infrastructure for technical builders, and we partner with founders to help them evolve into leaders of generational companies.

Back founder-operators with prior venture-scale exits solving hard technical problems in non-obvious, regulated deep-technical verticals including AI infrastructure, blockchain, biotech, and communications infrastructure. Co-invest alongside quality partners to maintain flexibility and focus on deep operational support and strategic value-add.

Exceptional founders with strong conviction deserve capital, mentorship, and partnership from day one. We back category-defining companies at the earliest stages.

First-check VC backing Baltic founders (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) at inception and pre-seed stages, with a strong focus on AI-first software. Backs founders who don't fit traditional VC criteria—no FAANG background or Ivy League degree required. Seeks undervalued talent before mainstream investor recognition.

Pre-seed fund investing in technical founders building developer-facing tools and infrastructure. Focused on curiosity, velocity of learning, and rapid building. Believe the world is shaped by unique insights at the intersection of art/culture and math/science.

Early-stage innovation from founders backed by seasoned operators. We invest in disruptive technologies solving real problems at the intersection of scientific breakthroughs and practical execution. Our founders get patient capital, hands-on mentorship from 100+ years of combined experience, and access to our network for strategic growth.

Madrona invests in people and ideas for the long run — backing visionary founders building transformational technology companies, with deep focus on applied AI across domain-specific applications, AI infrastructure, developer tools, enterprise software, and AI-enabled biotech. The firm serves as an active, full-stack partner providing capital plus recruiting, business development, and customer introductions.

Apply AI and data science to identify and invest in N-of-1 companies with 10-100x potential. Back founders who expand individual freedom and decentralize power. Invest in companies that embody principles from the Bill of Rights (voice, fair process, proportionality, user power) and Bitcoin whitepaper (trust-minimized, verifiable, aligned incentives, open access).

EPIC Ventures backs early-stage technology companies building in the information economy, with a focus on enterprise SaaS, healthcare technology, cybersecurity, and future of work. The firm believes the best way to build lasting companies is through genuine partnership with founders — providing capital, strategic guidance, operational expertise, and deep network access. Founded in 1994, EPIC helped build the Utah tech ecosystem and continues to be the foundational VC of the Mountain West.

We back bold, ambitious, and resilient founders driving breakthrough innovations in HealthTech, CleanTech, and AgriFoodTech. Female-led and gender-mixed teams deliver superior returns and drive meaningful impact. Over five decades of combined experience navigating financial cycles enables us to partner authentically with founders, providing not just capital but strategic guidance and operational support.

The AI-first transformation of business will be as big as digital, mobile, and cloud combined. We invest in companies building the AI-first technology stack: data foundations, AI tools, autonomous applications, and product-led growth companies that accelerate adoption. Founders building at any layer of this stack can reach goals and uncover opportunities previously unattainable.

Technology will define geopolitics. We invest in the Freedom Stack—foundational technologies critical to American national security and technological leadership. We partner with mission-driven founders building capabilities essential to American prosperity and strategic advantage.

We invest in technically sophisticated founding teams solving breakthrough problems in deep-tech. We believe the next generation of transformational companies will be built by scientists and engineers with deep domain expertise tackling problems at the frontier of AI, cybersecurity, quantum, robotics, space, synthetic biology, and bioengineering. We provide patient capital and technical partnership to help these teams achieve escape velocity.

Invest in only two kinds of technologies: those that move humanity toward utopia, and those that hold the line against oblivion. Back n-of-1 visions for an era of Black Swans—unconventional companies solving civilization-scale problems that others dismiss as too early, too risky, or too misunderstood.

Technology can have a highly disruptive impact on society. We back founders on the forefront of innovation with clear vision towards positive change, leveraging domain expertise to ensure value creation. Founder-first approach with operational support.

Mayfield invests in founders building iconic companies through AI-first innovation and human-AI collaboration. The firm believes the next wave of category-defining enterprises will leverage collaborative intelligence, where AI teammates augment and amplify human capability. Mayfield seeks deep tech founders with defensible innovation, clear market advantage, and the ability to scale globally.

Partner with spiky founders building category-defining companies using novel technological approaches. Focus on AI-driven innovation across alternative architectures, custom software, research assistants, TechBio, infrastructure, and enterprise applications. Provide capital, operational support, strategic guidance, and network access for founders with unique insights and deep technical expertise.

Deep technology and hard tech company investing at inflection points. Partner with technical founders building infrastructure-level solutions for global scale. Founded 2010 on belief that next generation of transformative companies require deep technical expertise, not just capital.

We democratize venture capital by providing individual accredited investors with professional-grade access to elite venture opportunities. We leverage our massive 850,000+ community network and 11,000+ investors to create unique value for founders, sourcing and diligencing deals alongside top-tier VCs (a16z, Sequoia, Khosla) without leading rounds. Our network is our competitive advantage—it compounds value for all stakeholders.

Backs inception-stage technical founders across Europe and Israel building solutions for hard markets including AI infrastructure, space/aerospace, advanced manufacturing, energy, biology, and other deep-tech verticals.

Back mission-driven founders addressing significant global challenges through leading-edge technology. Provide flexible and patient capital, leveraging our time, resources, and networks to support portfolio company success. Focus on founders with authentic social and environmental missions alongside commercial viability.

Breakthrough technologies that stretch the imagination — deep tech with the potential to create new product categories. We bring company-building skills and operating expertise to help founders find product-market fit.

K5 Global backs category-defining companies from inception to IPO. The firm leverages exceptional networks across media, entertainment, politics, finance, and technology to provide strategic value beyond capital. We believe the best companies are built by founders who can access world-class talent, capital, and strategic relationships.

Exceptional founders living in the future deserve operators who provide more than capital. We partner with founders on go-to-market, brand, storytelling, and team building.

Back technical teams working on breakthrough products. We invest in seed stage companies that demonstrate technical differentiation - meaning technical or product-level superiority is a major reason for future success. We pursue investments from application layer (AI/ML) through software infrastructure to hardware layers (semiconductors, photonics).

Back passionate, emerging talent solving deep technology challenges. Support founders from napkin-stage through IPO with patient, flexible evergreen capital. Focus on biotechnology, frontier software, food innovation, longevity, and AI that maximize impact and potential.

Transformative national security solutions emerge from early-stage private-sector startups developing frontier technologies. IQT identifies, evaluates, and leverages innovations to accelerate government adoption while enhancing commercial success. As of May 2026, IQT is emphasizing mission investing through fewer larger bets in autonomy, contested logistics, critical infrastructure, and technologies that can move to mission use quickly.

Be the first check in for founders building America's next era of critical technologies. Invest in audacious founders across Defense, Aerospace, Energy, AI, Manufacturing, Cybersecurity, and Health+Bio solving problems critical to national security and American technological leadership. Provide capital ($250K-$1M), unmatched government access, mentor network, and go-to-market acceleration.

Partner with exceptional founders to build generational companies that define the world's most critical industries. We provide not just capital but assemble teams of the highest caliber through our 5,000+ member builder community and deep operational expertise.

Exceptional founders backed at pre-seed and seed with both capital and hands-on operational support—talent, GTM, fundraising—build the most enduring companies. Pear is founder-first: founders-and-operators turned investors who have been in founders' shoes.

Back the quirky underdog pursuing seemingly impossible ideas. Frontier tech (aerospace, biotech, climate, robotics, crypto, AI, VR/AR) will create the next generation of legendary companies. Technical founders with deep domain expertise can solve the hardest problems in physics, chemistry, and computing.

Back founders building iconic companies that transcend boundaries. We invest directly in their growth to make them unbreakable. Founded on principle that luck isn't made, it's engineered. Founders are our customer, not LPs. We always vote shares with founders and provide 1% non-dilutive founder development capital alongside every first check.

Back exceptional Kiwi founders building globally transformative companies, from day one to IPO. New Zealand founders represent a significantly undervalued asset class, and Icehouse provides capital plus an ecosystem of 3,000+ investors and deep operational support.

Battery Ventures operates as a stage-agnostic firm backing technology-driven category leaders across all growth stages from seed to buyout. The firm believes the best tech investments span the entire founder journey, and they practice collaborative, research-focused investing with embedded operational support through their Portfolio Services platform. They seek technical founders with deep domain expertise and experienced operators building in four core sectors: Application Software, Infrastructure Software, Consumer, and Industrial Tech + Life Science Tools.

Backing exceptional people at the very start of their journey. We support founders from inception to scale through our global residency programs, providing capital, mentorship, and access to a network of 1,500+ companies across six continents.

Corporate-advantage seed investing. We identify promising AI and deep tech startups early, then leverage our hundreds of relationships with corporate venture capital arms to de-risk investments, accelerate time to exit, and create curated dealflow where both founders and corporates benefit from strategic alignment.

Invest in scalable, capital-efficient tech and tech-enabled startups at the Seed stage led by exceptional founders. We identify companies showing early traction that can achieve significant scale with disciplined capital deployment.

Data is the defensible moat in technology. We invest in companies that build proprietary data assets, analytics capabilities, or machine learning advantages to dominate their categories. Founded on 'information arbitrage' thesis - applying hedge fund quantitative discipline to early-stage venture.

Believe in innovation, risk-taking, and young talent. Best entrepreneurs are rare and precious. Provide quick capital, friendly terms, genuine commitment. Help but don't complicate. Monthly founder support.

HOF Capital invests in relentlessly ambitious founders building world-changing technologies that accelerate abundance: sustained technological progress that expands access to opportunity, health, and economic prosperity. Its current public thesis emphasizes AI and agentic systems as amplifiers of discovery, engineering, and knowledge creation, alongside frontier infrastructure and applications that can shorten scientific and technological invention timelines.

The only early-stage deep tech VC in CEE focusing on resilient technologies. We invest in founders building breakthrough technologies with proprietary IP in deep tech, MedTech, cleantech, autonomous vehicles/robotics, industrial, and resilient-tech. Technology must be genuinely unique and address real problems.

Back European technical founders building globally ambitious deeptech and critical technology companies at pre-seed and seed, with concentrated first-check conviction and Paris/San Francisco/Berlin support.

Sand Hill Angels backs seed-stage, high-tech companies with large and growing markets, well-defined problems, disruptive solutions, defensible technology, and strong teams with demonstrated ability to execute. The group leverages 145+ experienced angels to provide capital, mentorship, and network access across the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

Back ambitious teams with strong learning and execution capacities across all sectors, stages, and geographies. Technology-enabled businesses preferred. Volume-based, founder-centric investment philosophy.

We build category-defining companies through a combination of design, product, operations, and capital. We identify market gaps, pair brilliant founders with Expa's studio resources, and help them build companies that reshape entire industries.

A majority of the data our brains analyze is visual. Therefore, the majority of the data AI will analyze will also be visual, spanning the light and electromagnetic spectrums across all sectors. We thrive on collaborating with deep technical teams who leverage computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data.

Investing in the picks and shovels of volatility caused by convergent forces (AI, Web3, Deep Science) intersecting with demographic shifts and climate change. We seek to create venture-scale returns by backing bold founders building more equitable, beneficial, transparent, and accessible structures.

Elevate Ventures partners with innovation-driven founders to provide strategic capital, mentorship, and ecosystem access. Founded by a former founder (Governor Mitch Daniels), the firm believes the best founders exhibit grit, creativity, and coachability. They invest across all sectors and geographies but maintain primary focus on Indiana and Great Lakes Region entrepreneurs building cross-sector innovations.

We invest in early-stage Polish deep tech startups with a clear technological edge—solving hard problems through software-driven or hardware-enabled solutions. Defensible technology, early validation, and resilient founders are non-negotiables. A deeptech project without real customers becomes a research project.

Rule30 uses a fully algorithmic decision engine to identify outlier founders at pre-seed and seed stages across Europe and North America. The fund removes human bias by analyzing founder experience, educational background, network evolution, and career trajectory — excluding names and photos. The algorithm ranks founders into top 10%, 3%, and 0.1% tiers. An index-style strategy of 75-85 bets targets ≥3x minimum returns with 97.5% confidence.

Great startups can be built anywhere. We believe in founder-centric investing with operational support from a team of successful founders. We serve undernetworked geographic regions.

Equity of access and representation in venture capital delivers positive returns. Diverse and underrepresented (including LGBTQ+) leaders of high-growth companies deserve capital access. When these founders succeed, they influence ecosystems and open doors for historically excluded groups.

Democratize access to venture capital by building large syndicates of non-traditional LPs. Invest across all stages, sectors, and geographies based on founder quality and market conviction, not category restrictions. Enable 2,000+ diverse co-investors to participate alongside marquee firms like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz while maintaining founder-friendly economics.

Operator-led fund investing in ambitious founders building transformative AI applications. We partner with technical founders who understand AI/ML deeply and are solving real customer problems with capital efficiency. Great product is always the best marketing.