# AJ Smith

> AJ Smith is a seed investor at LvlUp Ventures backing Genetics and Health Care. See 2 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [LvlUp Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/lvlup-ventures-db25)
- Location: New York, United States
- Total investments: 2
- Last investment: Aug 2026
- Lead investor: 100%
- Last updated: Aug 2026

AJ Smith is a seed investor at LvlUp Ventures in New York focused on Genetics and Health Care. While AJ holds a Masters Degree in Songwriting from NYU Steinhardt School of Education, he has always had a passion for technology. AJ has served as an optical engineer and programming analyst for the U.S. Navy, software developer for V_Systems, Inc., QA member at Verisign, Inc., web developer at BitInstant, and consulted for various NYC start-upsincluding Access Gotham and Purpella.Trivia: AJ is an award-winning songwriter with a #3 hit in Australia. He has toured with his own band in the USA and opened for The Eagles, Lindsey Stirling, Andy Allo, and The Kin.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for AJ Smith: work email, personal email, work phone, personal phone and socials. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-email/aj-smith?utm_source=investor_profile

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Genetics | 1 | 50% |
| Health Care | 1 | 50% |
| Space Travel | 1 | 50% |
| Biotechnology | 1 | 50% |

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 1 | 50% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 50% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| India | 1 | 50% |
| United States | 1 | 50% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Claryx | Claryx is building the hospital immune system, reading the genomes of confirmed patient infections, linking related cases as outbreaks, and tracing each back to its likely source. When that source is in the building (a sink, a shared piece of equipment, a particular room), Claryx finds it by matching the patient's strain against a digital twinof the hospital's microbiome, sequenced from its air, its water and its surfaces, all on proprietary chemistry cheap enough to run continuously. Founded by brothers Kurt and Dirk Hackenberger, Claryx is based in New York and live across multiple health systems. | $3.5M | Pre-Seed | Aug 04, 2026 |  |
| Catalyx | Catalyx offers end-to-end services, handling every detail, including launch logistics, data reception, licensing, and satellite construction and payload integration. | $5.5M | Seed | Aug 21, 2025 |  |

2 of 2 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [640 Oxford](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/640-oxford-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Arka Venture Labs](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/arka-ventures-labs) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- Neon — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Boost VC](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/boostfunder) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Company Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/company-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- HF0 Residency — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About LvlUp Ventures

VC Fund · Los Angeles, United States

LvlUp Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on backing and accelerating top startups across every stage to create category-defining companies.LvlUp has over 1,500 core and extended team members across every major startup hub globally and reviews thousands of startup funding and acceleration applications every year. The firm is one of theworld’s largest and most recognized venture ecosystems (Forbes, 2024), creating dozens of Fortune 500, institutional, and government startup programs and investment partnerships representing trillions of dollars in market value.We leverage our deep advantages in industry expertise, bottom-up investment approach, and expansive ecosystem to: (1) accelerate startups at the early-stage through a novel bespoke approach that has produced top-quartile companies, (2) directly invest in mature seed startups that have shown defining vision and early traction, and (3) opportunistically accelerate small cap to publicly traded startups with great intrinsic value & competitive advantages to unlock newfound growth.Expanding the limits of the startup & venture capital since its founding, LvlUp Ventures is the first and only VC firm to have accelerated mid-market & publicly-traded companies, is the creator of the VC super application, and pioneered the bespoke acceleration model that scales over 50 companies with less than a 5% failure rate every year.

5 contacts available at LvlUp Ventures.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Aaron Golbin | Managing Partner | — |
| Adam Ned | Principal | — |
| AJ Smith | Co-Founder | — |
| Akshat Sharma | Venture Capital | — |
| Benjamin Kromnick | Venture Partner | — |

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### Similar stage
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## FAQ

### What does AJ Smith invest in?

AJ Smith invests primarily in Genetics, Health Care and Space Travel startups, most often at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. Most of the 2 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in India. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### How do I contact AJ Smith?

For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.

### When did AJ Smith last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for AJ Smith closed in Aug 2026. Shizune tracks 2 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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