M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund

Congrats to our portfolio company NeuBird.ai for being recognized as one of the top 10 hottest DevOps startups by CRN 👏 https://lnkd.in/ewpiBsUQ

I truly loved getting the chance to take the stage at Radio City Music Hall as part of Christie's 10th annual Art + Tech summit last week. I write so much about the way AI will impact businesses and our work lives, but it was refreshing to dive into the way it will affect everything else about our lives: the way we create, spend our free time and appreciate beauty. Thanks so much to my insightful panelists, Susannah Shipton, partner at AlleyCorp, Michael Stewart, managing partner at M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, and Jason Stoffer partner at Maveron for a great discussion around funding AI and why the bets we make now will reshape the future of our society. A couple highlights from the conversation: ❇️ Venture investment is moving beyond foundational models to the application layer. But since all the applications are leveraging the same handful of foundational models, it can be hard to figure out where to put those bets. The key? Great founders who can lock down proprietary datasets. ❇️ AI will hit the white collar workforce hard, especially at the entry level. But new grads shouldn’t try to pursue “AI proof” jobs. Those are the areas AI companies are actually most interested in automating. ❇️ “High-touch” professions are not going away. No one will ever want to buy a house or get brain surgery without interacting with a human first. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments! And, as always, follow me on Instagram and X for more behind the scenes on my reporting. Lots coming up! Instagram: https://lnkd.in/eN5wMp5x X: https://lnkd.in/enZ5DnUc Thanks so much to Devang Thakkar and the whole Christie's team, including, Sarah Buccarelli, Jessica Stanley, Molly Triana, and Tash Perrin for a spectacular event. And thanks to Susannah for passing along the great photo from Ben Winn. Hope to be back next year!

We're hiring and are seeking an experienced leader to head Portfolio Marketing and Events, leading strategic marketing initiatives and executing key events that showcase our startups and facilitate connections with customers, partners, and Microsoft's network. Ready to help shape the future of tech? Apply now ➡️ https://lnkd.in/d57gfYas 

The data center revolution is here. 🚀 Traditional #datacenters can't handle AI's explosive demands—today's breakthrough models need hundreds of thousands of processing elements connected across kilometer-length links, essentially turning entire facilities into single machines. The bottleneck? Copper-based networking. At M12, that’s why we're backing pioneers like nEye.ai who are transforming the #AIinfrastructure with future-proof optical switches Read our full Systems Thesis on why #opticalnetworking is the key to unlocking AI's future potential. 👇 https://lnkd.in/dt-qipj8

Cracking the Enterprise Code in AI Selling into the enterprise—beyond pilot engagements—is still the gold standard for AI startups. At M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, we regularly calibrate what “go-to-market maturity” really looks like by listening to enterprise customers who are actively testing AI solutions across internal and external applications. We brought together leaders from Barclays and six of our portfolio companies pushing the boundaries of AI data and infrastructure: 🔹 Arcee AI Lucas Atkins 🔹 Arize AI Jason Lopatecki 🔹 HiddenLayer – Malcolm Harkins 🔹 Fastino – George Hurn-Maloney 🔹 SynthLabs – Nathan Lile 🔹 DatologyAI – Ari Morcos What we learned: ✅ The bar is high for new SaaS vendors selling into financial and regulated industries. ✅ Marketplaces like Azure can streamline procurement and onboarding. ✅ Security must be embedded at every data touchpoint. ✅Transparent model overhead—context length, GPU-free compatibility, observability, and task-specific performance—matters more than ever. Huge thanks to Torstein Berteig, Yusuf Kazi, and Dimitrios Emmanoulopoulos from Barclays for their invaluable insights—and to Michael Stewart and James Wu for leading this M12 founder session. We’re proud to help catalyze this ecosystem and support the next generation of enterprise-ready AI.

🚨The newest M12 Founders Feature is officially live! 🚨 This month, we spoke with Ben Kliger at Zenity to learn about how Zenity got its start, its evolution over time as AI becomes more ubiquitous, and his vision for the company’s future. "This partnership [with M12] has not only supported our growth from an investment and sales perspective, but also enriched our understanding and capabilities across all areas of the business." We're proud to be part of this journey with you, Ben! Read the full conversation. https://lnkd.in/eQDuaVQj

Come join the incredible M12 team and help the next generation of tech leaders thrive! 🌟

The importance of bringing AI to the very edge is something that Armada knows all too well. 💡

M12 Managing Partner Michael Stewart had the privilege of moderating not one, but TWO high-impact panels with some of the most forward-thinking voices in the AI ecosystem during VentureBeat Transform. 💡 In the first panel, “AI Inference is Reshaping Enterprise AI Economics – Here's How to Respond,” Michael was joined by Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis), Sean Lie (Cerebras Systems), and Jonathan Ross (Groq) where they discussed: 🔹 The “AI Factory” metaphor (popularized by NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang) 🔹 How today’s bottleneck isn’t demand—it’s infrastructure capacity, and enterprises are writing checks for guaranteed access. 🔹 How we’re still in early price discovery. Value creation is outpacing cost control, and premium pricing follows differentiation. In the second panel, “Cracking AI’s Storage Bottleneck,” Michael spoke with Greg Matson (Solidigm) and Roger Cummings (PEAK:AIO) about: 🔹 How data gravity remains a central challenge for enterprises seeking scalable, simplified, and affordable storage infrastructure. 🔹The market is currently divided largely into two camps: 1) High-capacity solid-state storage for edge AI scenarios and 2) High-performance storage for training and inference workloads Thank you, VentureBeat, for including us in these important conversations where we can continue to support the builders who are redefining what's possible at the infrastructure layer of AI.

What’s the true cost of AI at scale — and how should enterprises respond? Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis), Sean Lie (Cerebras Systems), Jonathan Ross (Groq), and Michael Stewart (M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund) are unpacking the new economics of AI inference: custom silicon, hyperscaler dynamics, tokenomics, and the global hardware race. From ultra-low latency to geopolitical tensions, this conversation is essential for leaders building the next generation of scalable AI systems. #venturebeat #agenticAI #transform2025