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I invest mostly in infrastructure software, both traditional and decentralized, from…
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Salil Deshpande shared thisI hadn't heard of Eigen AI. MIT PhD recent-grad AI whiz-kids, how would I know them? Fortunately MIT prof Matt Rhodes-Kropf (Tectonic Ventures), a dear friend and #Uncorrelated LP said, “Hey, you should take a look a this super cool seed deal I’m doing.” I love it when people say that. I committed after the first meeting. Six months later they get bought for $643M. Kudos to Ryan Hanrui Wang and the amazing team, and thank you Matt!Salil Deshpande shared thisToday, we're announcing that Eigen AI is joining Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS). From day one, our mission has been Artificial Efficient Intelligence — building the world's most efficient engines for generating intelligence. With Nebius, we're working toward the best AI cloud, uniting Eigen's industry-leading AI model customization and inference software, with Nebius's global hardware and infrastructure footprint, so any developer or enterprise can run the best models at the best price, with no capacity ceiling. After close, Eigen's optimization stack will be integrated directly into Nebius Token Factory. The entire Eigen AI team is joining Nebius in full, establishing Nebius's engineering and research presence in the San Francisco Bay Area. To our customers, our team, our investors at Tectonic Ventures, E14 Fund, Uncorrelated Ventures, and AGI House Ventures, our angel investors, advisors, mentors, and supporters — and to the Nebius team for the conviction and partnership — thank you. Ryan Hanrui Wang, co-founder and CEO of Eigen AI, said: “We’re proud to join Nebius and work alongside the Token Factory team to push the boundaries of inference performance. Nebius has built a world-class AI cloud with a deep engineering culture that perfectly aligns with our own. Together, we are removing the friction of AI model customization and deployment so developers can run models reliably in production without managing the underlying infrastructure.” Full announcement at: https://lnkd.in/gqpJKBvH
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Salil Deshpande shared thisGlad that #Uncorrelated was able to join Bessemer Venture Partners in preempting a $20M round in HockeyStack. https://lnkd.in/gTfP67ib HockeyStack’s key thesis was that Salesforce's data model was too restrictive, so much so that sales and marketing could never properly be unified. And since Salesforce educated the industry on what a CRM should be, all its competitors, such as HubSpot, copied their data modeling errors; thus it’s impossible to fully unify sales and marketing using those tools (e.g., for full end-to-end attribution).Salil Deshpande shared thisWe raised $50M to build the World’s First AI Revenue Agent: It runs New Business, Expansion, and Prospecting 24/7. AI is changing the world, but Sales teams still run on tribal knowledge, gut calls, and fictional CRM stages: - Your best rep closes 2-3x more than your median. Nobody knows why. - Pipeline reviews are guesswork, and forecasts break every quarter. - Every tool tells you what happened. None of them close you more business. HockeyStack’s Revenue Agents fix this in 3 key ways: 1. Build your winning Blueprint: HockeyStack reverse-engineers every deal you've ever won or lost and extracts the exact path to win, by motion and segment. This becomes the brain for Revenue Agents. 2. Clone your Top reps: Your top performers run plays that live in their heads. HockeyStack finds and deploys them across your entire team. 3. Deploy Revenue Agents: Dedicated Agents monitor every deal and account, execute the right moves autonomously, and flag risks. A Revenue Agent spots your $550K deal about to stall, identifies a new champion, gets the intro, and preps your rep. All before morning coffee. 300+ Enterprise companies run revenue on HockeyStack, including Microsoft, 8x8, and Yext. On average, teams close 48% more deals using the platform. If you have 30+ reps, HockeyStack will 2x their output. If you don't see it in a pilot, I'll donate $10K to a charity of your choice. Book a demo here: https://lnkd.in/gpDVQ4Wm Everything in my life has led to this moment: I grew up middle-class in Turkey, made $350K when I was 18 with my first SaaS, and dropped out of college after 3 months to build a generational company. Today, we are an 8-figure business. Fortune 100 companies trust and love us, and 90+ of the smartest people in tech joined our team last year to build the Agent that Revenue Teams deserve. Thank you to: Our investors who tripled down (Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Alexandra Sukin, Jeremy Levine, and Salil Deshpande), customers, team, and my co-founders.
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Salil Deshpande shared thisExcited to receive OpenAI stock in the all-stock acquisition of Promptfoo (#uncorrelated). Much gratitude to George Mathew, Ian W., Ganesh Bell for allowing Uncorrelated to invest early. https://lnkd.in/gTpaBXmUOpenAI acquires Promptfoo to secure its AI agents | TechCrunchOpenAI acquires Promptfoo to secure its AI agents | TechCrunch
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Salil Deshpande shared thisThe code reviewer from CodeAnt AI (#uncorrelated) found 87 zero-day vulnerabilities across npm, PyPI, Maven, and NuGet. This is #1, the most rare and severe: a CVSS 10.0 vulnerability (the highest possible severity score), a critical authentication bypass hidden for six years in pac4j-jwt, a widely used Java security library.Salil Deshpande shared thisCodeAnt AI’s code reviewer just found a CVSS 10.0 vulnerability. CVE-2026-29000. The highest possible severity score. The vulnerability had been sitting in pac4j, one of the most widely used Java authentication libraries, for nearly 6 years. No static scanner caught it. No human reviewer caught it. Our AI code reviewer did. This was a complete authentication bypass caused by a logic gap between the JWT specification and the implementation in `pac4j-jwt`. What does that mean in practice? An attacker can craft a malicious authentication token and log in as any user, including an admin. - No password - No credentials - No stolen session The only thing they need is your server’s RSA public key, which is publicly available by design. The root cause: the library accepts a class of token that the JWT spec technically allows, but that should never bypass signature verification. When pac4j receives that token, it skips signature verification entirely and creates an authenticated session from attacker-controlled claims. We’ve shared the full technical write-up and working PoC in the links below. We don’t publish random code review benchmark claims. We publish CVEs. This is one of 87 vulnerabilities we’ve uncovered so far, including issues affecting packages with 500M+ weekly downloads, many of which are currently in responsible disclosure with maintainers. Kudos to Patrick Garrity and team at VulnCheck to expediting the CVE assignment process.
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Salil Deshpande reposted thisSalil Deshpande reposted thisYour AI agent just wrote a Terraform change that touches 6 services. It has no idea. This is the reality most platform and infra teams are walking into. Agents have no awareness of cross-service dependencies, compliance requirements, or the blast radius of what they're proposing. They're generating change at a volume and speed that existing review processes were never designed to handle. Cory O'Daniel will sit down with special guest Kelsey Hightower to talk about what's actually broken in how most teams are approaching agentic infrastructure today: • Agents generating change at speeds humans can't review • Zero awareness of blast radius or compliance requirements • The validation layers that have to exist before agentic infra is safe to ship If your team is responsible for keeping production stable, this one's for you. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗷𝗼𝗶𝗻: Send 1–2 questions you want Cory and Kelsey to answer in the chat below, or email them to Luis@massdriver.cloud — we'll send you the link to register. Hope to see you there!
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Salil Deshpande shared thisAs AI workloads eat up global computing supply, DRAM prices are surging like never before—creating major challenges for teams trying to plan out their data center spend. One of my portfolio companies, Mext, is addressing the largest cost component in the datacenter: server memory (DRAM). From being on the board of Redis for the last twelve years, I’ve learned a lot about the various aspects of this problem and approaches to solving them. Mext found a breakthrough, using new AI techniques, for dramatically reducing the amount of server-DRAM required to run applications, all while maintaining performance. It intelligently manages the server’s memory, keeping hot pages (i.e., those in use by applications) in fast DRAM and offloading cold pages (i.e., those less used) to a much less expensive memory tier (e.g., NVMe Flash). Key to the approach is ensuring cold memory pages that are about to be accessed by an application are back in DRAM before the application needs them or notices that they were gone. This is done without modifications to the application or the OS – so it can run in the cloud or on-premise. Mext thus allows applications to either run using less DRAM or keep their DRAM footprint but do more with it. They're hosting a webinar along with Fred Weber (former CTO of AMD) on Jan 22nd at 10am pacific time. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/gXe9GCeEWelcome! You are invited to join a webinar: RAM Prices Are Surging—What's Happening and What To Do. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: RAM Prices Are Surging—What's Happening and What To Do. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.
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Salil Deshpande reposted thisSalil Deshpande reposted thisThe 4th Session of the "Stanford University #AI and #Investment Series", co-hosted by AIx2 and Stanford BASES brought together an exceptional group of investors with unique investment practices for a thought-provoking conversation. A huge thank you to our panelists for sharing such depth of insight. My key takeaways: 🔹 Salil Deshpande, General Partner at Uncorrelated Ventures — Second-largest solo GP — delivered a masterclass on reducing complex investment processes to first principles, and how he’s taking efficiency to the next level with AI, all while running a $750M fund with #zero_employees. Exceptional clarity and precision. 🔹 Saam Motamedi, Partner at Greylock Partners (established 1965), shared powerful perspectives on horizontal AI platforms and how #Anthropic —a Greylock portfolio company—is building #vertical_AI solutions. He also highlighted Greylock’s small-batch, hands-on investment model and their internally developed AI tools. 🔹 John Whaley, Stanford LLM Lecturer, 3x Founder, and Inception Studio Partner, offered candid insights on the current AI bubble, why smaller VCs may hold a competitive edge, and the rising influence of experienced founders in this new cycle. 🔹 Will Ballard, Chief Data Officer, Prime Unicorn Index & Cancer Focus Fund, walked us through a data-driven perspective on U.S. private markets and his work developing the U.S. Unicorn Index and pioneering it for #data_driven_investment. If you are an investor, reach out to us for access to the event #video_recording. And stay tuned for more speakers and upcoming sessions in the Stanford AI and Investment Series. Special thanks to Stanford BASES team, the largest entrepreneurship group in Stanford , Matthew Musson, Taarush Grover, Amir Zeinali, and Armita Hosseini for making this great event happen! #AI #Investment #Stanford #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #PrivateMarkets #AIx2
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Salil Deshpande reposted thisSalil Deshpande reposted thisCongratulations to Uncorrelated Ventures for winning both Emerging Performance of the Year: Venture Capital and Performance of the Year: Venture Capital under $500 million categories at the Private Equity Wire® US Awards 2025. See the full list of winners on our website. #PEWAwards Salil Deshpande
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Salil Deshpande reposted thisSalil Deshpande reposted thisThis VC manages $750M across 3 funds with zero employees, partners, analysts, or even an EA while delivering 5-6x returns consistently. Meet Salil Deshpande, the second-largest truly solo GP by AUM. With 100+ infrastructure software investments and 300 LP relationships, Salil co-invests alongside Accel, Benchmark, Bessemer, and a16z without competing for control. Before going solo, Salil spent 14 years at larger firms, including Bain Capital, where he invested in 42 companies in 7 years (holding a record of the highest # of deals per year). His career track record sits at 6x TVPI with 35% IRRs. His deep expertise in infrastructure software enables him to evaluate technical depth with an expert lens, having seen hundreds of similar companies. With this, Salil built the foundation for a pull-based fundraising strategy: He doesn’t have to chase LPs. He simply sends a deck, gets on a one-hour Zoom, answers questions, sends materials, and then never follows up. This strategy delivers a 75%+ conversion rate across 100+ conversations. Today, Salil manages 300 LPs by himself by issuing quarterly letters of 5-15 pages that provide full context for every markdown, down round, and value decrease. This eliminates LP anxiety and reduces the need for catch-up calls, letting him spend 70% of his time on founders instead of investor relations. With more time for actual investing, he built his unconventional portfolio approach: Instead of fighting for 20% ownership stakes, Salil invests smaller checks of a couple $M each in 4x the number of companies, quadrupling his probability of capturing a decacorn. He builds positions over 3-4 rounds: say $2M at $25-50M post, then $3-4M at $100M post, then $3-4M at $250M post. This gets $10-20M invested at a blended $100-150M entry cost, delivering 40-60x returns at $10B valuations despite never owning 20% at any single round. He also has a true market-based partnership model, where he presents deals to 5+ domain experts at competing firms who invest only when the deals genuinely make sense, thereby eliminating politics and social obligation of traditional VC partnerships within the same firm. This delivers pure market signals with a 30% opt-in rate among investors. What surprised me most was Salil's operational efficiency, without even an EA. He outsources everything non-core, like fund administration, legal, and accounting (spends millions to buy back mental space). The freed-up bandwidth allows him to focus purely on technical evaluation. Salil's model works because of his established track record, narrow focus, and comfort operating against consensus when others pass on deals he still believes in. Salil’s systems to manage 300 LPs and evaluate 200+ deals annually are learnable. I broke down his entire operating model and his unique strategy that generates 6x TVPI with 35% IRRs returns in my latest deep dive. Share this post and subscribe to my Substack to get access. 👇 Link in first comment
Salil Deshpande commented on a post
2mo
I asked my AI how to explain everything I've taught it, and it said... see screenshot.
Salil Deshpande commented on a post
3mo
Using Tasklet (even before Instant Apps) has been like hiring 1 EA and 2 junior people. I've taught Tasklet all sorts of things. I've set up a webhook to let it know where I am. I've taught it how to figure out whether I should take a train or drive (based on whether the meeting is a 20+ minute walk from the train station). It puts train times and drive times on my calendar. I've taught it to order an uber for me where the uber's arrival time coincides with train arrival times or meeting end times. I taught it who all my LPs are. I've taught it who all my portfolio companies and founders are. I've got it monitoring my inbox for emails from LPs and founders so that I can provide same-day service to each. I've got it reading my emails and jumping in to schedule meetings. I've got it recommending which later-stage VCs to introduce each portfolio company to. I talk and text to it from my phone while I'm driving.
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Salil Deshpande reacted on thisSalil Deshpande reacted on thisI’m glad to report that Anthropic’s infamous blog post has been corrected, and Hiive’s name has been removed. The inaccurate post caused needless confusion amongst the investment community and unfair damage to Hiive’s reputation. Let me be clear: every investment through Hiive (in Anthropic or otherwise) is legitimate. They are authorized and approved whenever such authorization is required. There is no basis for anyone to suggest that they can be invalidated. Investors that have gained exposure to Anthropic through Hiive can be confident that they will participate in Anthropic’s success. Hiive’s mission is to build state-of-the-art liquidity infrastructure for private companies, their shareholders, and their investors. We are succeeding in that mission and have earned the trust of countless private companies. In fact, we manage liquidity exclusively for some of the world’s most valuable late-stage private companies. Had Anthropic approached us before their aggressive new stance and corresponding public statements (they did not), we would have gladly worked with them to deliver a unified message to the market. What this whole situation highlights is a structural flaw in the private market that has nothing to do with Hiive. There is an entire industry of insiders peddling access to valuable private companies in exchange for massive “pre-paid management fees” that are essentially brokerage fees. However, these firms are not licensed as brokers and are not subject to the rigorous compliance regimes of FINRA member firms like Hiive. Meanwhile, the FINRA member firms and platforms that are actually licensed to carry out brokerage activities and that meet the substantial regulatory burdens of doing so are the ones met with suspicion. It’s the product of decades of traditional practices and entrenched interests that have every reason to stop us. We will march forward in our mission undaunted. When truth is on your side, you have nothing to fear. #liquidity
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Salil Deshpande reacted on thisSalil Deshpande reacted on this90% of today's software is embarrassingly easy to breach. We ran AI pentests on 200+ companies. Most were leaking PII, PHI, or other critical data. Annual pentest miss these. SAST & SCA tools with 10,000 findings bury the actual exploit. We need continuous AI offense, fused with codebase, network, & cloud context. That's what CodeAnt AI does. Get a free pentest today --> https://app.codeant.ai Pay only if we find high or critical issue.
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Salil Deshpande reacted on thisETF Partners - The Environmental Technologies Fund
ETF Partners - The Environmental Technologies Fund
Salil Deshpande reacted on thisFor 5,000 years, project management has been governed by the “Iron Law” of time, cost, and quality. But today, the world is introducing a critical fourth element: carbon. We are looking back at our insightful conversation with Greg Lawton, CEO of our portfolio company Nodes & Links. Greg explains how Nodes & Links is utilising advanced analytics and AI to automate carbon calculations in real time. Rather than relying on historical accounting, project managers can now orchestrate complex construction systems to see the immediate carbon and financial impacts of their day-to-day decisions. The best part? Sustainability and efficiency go hand in hand. By predicting delays and reducing system inefficiencies, projects can finish months ahead of schedule which significantly lowers both project emissions and capital costs. Watch the full interview to learn how AI is helping the construction industry execute predictably, sustainably, and at pace: https://lnkd.in/eBJhrkPF #Sustainability #SustainabilityThroughInnovation #ProjectManagement #AI #ConstructionInnovation #VentureCapital #VCETF Partners Annual Investor Meeting: Interview with Greg Lawton (Nodes & Links)ETF Partners Annual Investor Meeting: Interview with Greg Lawton (Nodes & Links)
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