Adit Singh was a partner at Foundation Capital when he helped source and co-lead the first funding round into then-obscure chip startup Cerebras.
By the time Cerebras held its blockbuster IPO in May, Foundation Capital held a roughly 7% stake, making it the third-largest shareholder in the company, which now trades at a valuation of nearly $50 billion.
Singh now has a new VC firm to call home: On Thursday, he said he’s now joined the 57-year-old Mayfield as an infrastructure partner.
At Mayfield, Singh will invest in hardware, infrastructure software, cybersecurity, and physical AI. He says it was the firm’s strength in semiconductors that drew him to the role.
“If you look at Mayfield’s semiconductor portfolio, it’s probably the best in the market right now,” Singh told TechCrunch, pointing to Mayfield’s investments in Upscale AI, which was recently valued at $2 billion, and Lumilens, which just raised $700 million at a $5.5 billion valuation.
“I’m a chip designer by training,” Singh said. “My secret sauce is being able to look at any workload and see how it works from the application all the way down to the transistor.”
He credits his background in electrical engineering to helping him recognize the potential in Cerebras 10 years ago. However, Singh didn’t stick around as an investor at Foundation. In 2017, he co-founded Neotribe Ventures, and after spending four years leading the firm, he joined an early-stage firm, Cota Capital.
Singh says he decided to join Mayfield in large part because the size of seed infrastructure deals has ballooned in recent years. While smaller funds often get priced out of mega-seed deals, Mayfield’s $3 billion in assets under management allows it to write seed checks of up to $20 million.
Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha told TechCrunch that despite knowing Singh for 15 years and sitting on three startup boards together — including Upscale AI and unicorn AI startup Velaura AI — it still took some time to convince him to join the firm.
“We have been talking for a long time, and this time stars aligned,” Chaddha said.