Section 32 (S32) recently announced the closing of its Fund 5, an oversubscribed $525 million investment vehicle to back and scale companies innovating at the forefront of technology. Fund 5 will invest in companies that are pushing the boundaries in software and AI to enable new capabilities and step-changes in performance across markets including enterprise software, cybersecurity, data infrastructure, gaming, fintech, precision medicine and computational biology.
With its Google lineage, S32 is positioned to help catalyze the next wave of AI-driven disruption. And many of S32’s portfolio companies were sourced from, or traced back to, Alphabet, including: Cohere and Inceptive, co-founded by architects behind the groundbreaking 2017 Transformer paper; Exai Bio and BigHat Biosciences, co-founded by former leaders of Google Genomics and Google Brain; and Phaidra, co-founded by a senior researcher from Google Deepmind.
S32 also revealed that Wesley Tillu was promoted from Senior Principal to Partner. Wesley joined S32 in 2021 from In-Q-Tel (the venture capital arm of the CIA and U.S. intelligence community). At In-Q-Tel, Wesley led and executed several investments across cybersecurity, AI/ML, enterprise software, fintech and other frontier technologies. Plus, Wesley also holds prior experience at Google, GIC, and Merrill Lynch, as well as degrees in business and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, and Cornell University.
Since joining S32, Wesley has helped source notable investments. And he currently serves on the Board of Directors of Inworld and is a board observer at Phaidra. Plus, Wesley has extended S32’s research capabilities and bolstered S32’s partnerships with the entrepreneurial community and other top-tier venture capital firms.
KEY QUOTES:
“Entrepreneurs are the visionaries who bring the future to life, and S32 aims to invest in the most disruptive and impactful founders.”
“At Google, Bill (Maris) and I had the privilege of being at the epicenter of groundbreaking advancements in software and AI. AI expertise of the highest caliber is a rarity, and we are thrilled that many of the premier innovators in the field are leaders of the companies in our portfolio.”
- Andy Harrison, Managing Partner and CEO of S32
