AI | Felicis | www.felicis.com

Felicis Ventures, a venture capital firm, highlights the transformative potential of AI, emphasizing the shift from background AI to foreground AI and the emergence of AI-native companies. These companies are characterized by their reliance on data feedback loops, heavy compute investments, and a focus on human-AI collaboration. Felicis recognizes the challenges of translating AI research into commercially successful products and provides support to founders through access to enterprise decision-makers, expert advisors, and community building strategies.

Felicis believes that AI is not merely a technological advancement, but a catalyst for entirely new markets and opportunities. Founders and investors like Lukas Biewald, CEO of Weights & Biases, commend Felicis' commitment to long-term support and innovation, emphasizing the importance of trust and collaborative partnerships in the AI landscape. Felicis further explores the evolving AI landscape with insights on the "agentic web," the rise of AI data infrastructure, and the burgeoning field of embodied AI.

The AI era is here

Our AI spotlights

AI’s potential

AI has ushered in the fourth big wave of technology (following the internet, cloud, and mobile waves). The way we work, learn, and play is evolving as we move from interfacing with AI in the background, like content recommender systems, to AI in the foreground, like personalized AI agents. With this change comes an acute need for tooling upgrades. At Felicis, we’re committed to investing in both AI applications and infrastructure at the earliest stages.

What makes an AI-native company?

One unique feature of AI-native startups is the data feedback loop: with more data, models get better at making predictions, which improves AI products over time This loop looks slightly different in the age of foundation models, but the core premise remains the same: in AI, data is king. Another differentiator among AI startups is the capital, compute, and research acumen required to win. We’re entering an age where companies spend more on compute than talent, and this trend is unlikely to stop. At the same time, the best AI startups leverage humans in the loop to have the biggest impact. We look for this balance—AI as leverage for people, and people as leverage for AI—in every AI-native startup we meet.

Crossing the chasm from research to commercialization

The challenges of turning research into a product—let alone a commercially successful product—are vast. Having partnered with AI-native companies for over a decade, we’ve seen how innately different selling an AI product is from selling a SaaS product. Which is why we help Felicis-backed founders validate ideas with enterprise C-level decision-makers who give quick feedback on working product demos and the right advisors on GTM strategies. Not only does this acquaint AI founders with different buyer personae, but it allows founders to refine their value propositions and iterate toward product-market fit. AI founders need to understand that building their communities is akin to relentless customer research and engagement; it’s not enough just to build the right tools for them but to continuously find methods of amplification through community, branding, and more.

AI Founders

We are building a generational company. We want to have investors who understand how to build companies that not only change our market, but define or create entire new markets on their own because they're making bets and they're innovating in a way that's never been done before. It wasn't really a hard choice when we realized that we could put Felicis on our cap table because they truly believe the opportunity of growth and the innovation cycle takes time and that you need to be there to support the company as it starts to invent a market.

From a founder's perspective, so much trust is involved when you work with an investor. You are really vulnerable to all kinds of things, so trust is the number one aspect to consider when evaluating a potential partner. I was super excited to work with Felicis for the third time. There's no substitute for 10 years of working together.

Lukas Biewald

CEO and Co-Founder, Weights & Biases

Our AI Insights

The agentic web

We think browsing the web could become as archaic as renting a DVD, and sooner than most people realize.

AI | Felicis