Ben Yu
Managing Partner @ Sierra Ventures
San Francisco, United States
Ben Yu is a Series A investor at Sierra Ventures in San Francisco focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Ben Yu is the Managing Partner of Sierra Ventures.
- Total investments:
- 105
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 28%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Ben Yu invests in
Stages Ben Yu invests in
Countries Ben Yu invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
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| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 13 (12%)
- Artificial Intelligence 13 (12%)
- Machine Learning 12 (11%)
- Semiconductor 8 (8%)
- Information Technology 8 (8%)
Stage
- Series A 28 (27%)
- Seed 20 (19%)
- Series B 17 (16%)
- Series C 10 (10%)
- Series D 5 (5%)
Country
- United States 41 (39%)
- China 5 (5%)
- Israel 2 (2%)
- India 1 (1%)
- Armenia 1 (1%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quintessent is a Santa Barbara start-up that commercializes quantum dot-based lasers and photonic integrated circuits. Its solutions leverage the unique properties of quantum dot gain media with co-designed architectures to enable future applications in optical networking, deep learning systems, and sensing.It is based in Santa Barbara,California. | $40M / Series A / Aug 24, 2026 | ||
| Expert Intelligence develops AI systems to scale expert decision-making in regulated laboratory conditions where data is restricted, stakes are high, and validation is required. | $4.7M / Seed / Feb 04, 2026 | ||
| Movandi is the fastest growing 5G mmWave solutions company with a mission to revolutionize 5G Everywhere. The company was founded by two siblings, Maryam and Reza Rofougaran, today’s top leaders in the wireless industry, whose innovations have shaped and transformed wireless in the last few decades. Having pioneered wireless systems. Movandi issolving real-world 5G mmWave deployments with unmatched differentiation and high performance core technology in 5G integrated circuits, antennas, systems, and algorithms design disciplines, to enable 5G to its full potential. Movandi’s flexible solutions solve 5G mmWave deployment cost and schedule challenges and provide future-proof solutions utilizing mesh and routing to further improve 5G coverage and capacity. Movandi’s strong and diverse system portfolio of IP and patents plays a critical role across the complete 5G ecosystem, from infrastructure to mobile, while allowing for maximum 5G coverage. | $40M / Venture - Series Unknown / Oct 14, 2025 | ||
| Revalia Bio develops curative drugs for chronic organ-centered disease. | $14.5M / Seed / Sep 04, 2025 | ||
| FriendliAI is a generative AI infrastructure platform that enables deployment, scaling, and monitoring, including text, image, video, and audio, from sources like Hugging Face, and integrates quantization techniques such as FP8, INT8, and AWQ to improve inference efficiency. It offers managed services that automate GPU provisioning, auto-scaling,failure recovery, and performance tracking, helping businesses streamline generative AI deployment with reduced infrastructure complexity and cost. It also supports integrations with model hubs and tooling for debugging, observability, and structured API outputs. | $20M / Seed / Aug 28, 2025 | ||
| Augmentus is a robotics technology company that is a leader in robot vision and robot motion planning solutions. Our proprietary technologies enable easy-to-use and rapid digitization of the work environment, automated robot path generation, and an intuitive graphical interface that eliminates the need for robot expertise and downtime robotprogramming. Augmentus' products are being used by the world's leading robotics and advanced manufacturing companies for applications such as robot welding, finishing, sandblasting, shot peening, and painting. We empower manufacturers to recoup ROI faster by lowering the time, cost and skill barriers in industrial automation. Companies using Augmentus have experienced up to 95% downtime reduction in industrial automation.We are on a mission to accelerate the transition to full automation, enabling local manufacturers everywhere to thrive. | $11M / Series A / Jul 09, 2025 | ||
| Podcastle is an AI-powered audio content creation platform that helps podcasters, bloggers, journalists, content marketers, educators, and other content creators to convert their text content to audio, edit audio content, and achieve production-quality sound within seconds. The company’s goal is to democratize access to audio content tools andserve as a one-stop shop web studio for professional-sounding audio editing. | $13.5M / Series A / Feb 01, 2024 | ||
| Podcastle is an AI-powered content creation platform that helps podcasters, educators, marketers, and other creators to produce professional-quality audio and video content like podcasts and audiobooks. The company’s goal is to democratize access to content creation by offering an end-to-end suite of tools encompassing creation, editing,transcription, voice duplication, and distribution. | $13.5M / Series A / Feb 01, 2024 | ||
| Augmentus is a robotics technology company that is a leader in robot vision and robot motion planning solutions. Our proprietary technologies enable easy-to-use and rapid digitization of the work environment, automated robot path generation, and an intuitive graphical interface that eliminates the need for robot expertise and downtime robotprogramming. Augmentus' products are being used by the world's leading robotics and advanced manufacturing companies for applications such as robot welding, finishing, sandblasting, shot peening, and painting. We empower manufacturers to recoup ROI faster by lowering the time, cost and skill barriers in industrial automation. Companies using Augmentus have experienced up to 95% downtime reduction in industrial automation.We are on a mission to accelerate the transition to full automation, enabling local manufacturers everywhere to thrive. | $5.7M / Series A / Nov 14, 2023 | ||
| Quintessent is a Santa Barbara start-up that commercializes quantum dot-based lasers and photonic integrated circuits. Its solutions leverage the unique properties of quantum dot gain media with co-designed architectures to enable future applications in optical networking, deep learning systems, and sensing.It is based in Santa Barbara,California. | $11.6M / Seed / Oct 26, 2023 | ||
| See all 105 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Sierra Ventures
Sierra Ventures is a Bay Area-based early-stage venture firm investing globally with a focus on Next Generation Enterprise and Emerging Technologies. With over three decades of experience and over $2 billion of assets under management, Sierra has created a vast network of successful entrepreneurs, Global 1000 CXOs, operational executives, and deepdomain experts, providing a platform for entrepreneurs around the world.Sierra Ventures primarily invests in Seed and Series A rounds, with a preference to lead investment rounds and reserve capital for follow on rounds. Investment sectors include artificial intelligence/machine learning, big data, cloud, fintech, health tech, IoT/infrastructure, marketplaces, SaaS & enterprise apps, security, and emerging technologies such as 5G, devices, blockchain, robotics, and virtual reality / augmented reality. Sierra Ventures typically makes initial investments between $500,000 and $7 million on average and invests between $500,000 and $15 million over the life of an investment. The firm has invested in leading companies such as Intuit, Invensense, Greenplum, MakeMyTrip, OnLink, Teradata, StrataCom, Sourcefire, Treasure Data, and more. Sierra Ventures was founded in 1982 and is based in San Mateo, California.
Sierra Ventures Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Peter Wendell
Founder
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Al Ghous
Venture Advisor
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Anne Gherini
Chief Marketing Officer
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Ben Yu
Managing Partner
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Daniel Paredes
Investor
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FAQ
What does Ben Yu invest in?
Ben Yu invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning startups, most often at Series A and Seed stage. Most of the 105 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Ben Yu?
Public channels for Ben Yu include LinkedIn and X (Twitter). 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 Ben Yu last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Ben Yu closed in Aug 2026. Shizune tracks 105 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 Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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