Sentinel Global, a San Francisco-based multi-stage venture capital firm, announced a significant expansion of its senior investment team as it prepares for growth and a 2026 fundraising. The firm revealed that veteran investors Ethel Chen and Karan Sharma have joined founder and Managing Partner Jeremy Kranz, reuniting a leadership group that previously worked together and backed companies including Affirm, DoorDash, Airbnb, Chainalysis, Databricks, Zoom, Uber, Snowflake, and Coinbase before at the sovereign investment fund GIC.
Sentinel Global said the revamped leadership brings over 60 years of combined investing and operating experience, with a track record that includes 20 initial public offerings and tens of billions in returns during their prior tenure at GIC. The team is positioning itself as a “New Sentinel,” emphasizing senior relationships, deep domain judgment and faster decision-making enabled by modern research and artificial intelligence tools.
Central to the firm’s strategy is the expansion of Sentinel Labs, an AI-powered research arm designed to help limited partners and founders translate emerging technologies into actionable strategies and de-risk enterprise adoption. The firm also unveiled its “Unlimited Partner” model, which treats investors as an active network contributing to investment theses and founder support, and introduced Sago, an internal AI tool intended to enhance workflows for LPs and startups.
Sentinel Global’s investment focus spans three interconnected domains: AI Enterprise (including trust layers for autonomous systems), Programmable Money (machine-to-machine financial rails), and Connected Commerce (digitizing physical infrastructure). The firm plans to leverage its experience and AI tooling to identify and support category-defining enterprise technology companies globally.
KEY QUOTES:
“Sentinel is being rebuilt for the way venture actually works now: senior relationships, domain judgment and speed, paired with modern research and AI rails that remove friction.”
“We’re bringing the band back together and investing in the infrastructure to serve founders and LPs more directly.”
Jeremy Kranz, Managing Partner, Sentinel Global
