# Brandon Leonardo

> Brandon Leonardo is a seed investor at Instacart backing Artificial Intelligence and Software. See 9 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Instacart](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/instacart)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 9
- Last investment: May 2023
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardo
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/shiftb
- Website: https://x.com/shiftb
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brandon.leonardo

Brandon Leonardo is a seed investor at Instacart in San Francisco focused on Artificial Intelligence and Software. Brandon Leonardo is based out of San Francisco, California and is the Co-founder of Instacart. Brandon Leonardo attended San José State University.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $3.2M–$8.8M |
| Series D | $100M–$100M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Artificial Intelligence | 3 | 33% |
| Software | 2 | 22% |
| Marketplace | 2 | 22% |
| Food and Beverage | 2 | 22% |
| Information Technology | 2 | 22% |

22 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 5 | 56% |
| Series A | 1 | 11% |
| Series D | 1 | 11% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 6 | 67% |
| Brazil | 1 | 11% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| PostgresML | PostgresML is an AI application database. It is a Rust-written open-source Postgres extension.PostgresML instantly scales workloads with dedicated replicas or serverless GPU-accelerated cloud. | $4.7M | Seed | May 10, 2023 |  |
| Airtrain AI | Airtrain AI is the AI Data Platform. From our LLM Playground to our Dataset Explorer to batch evaluation and custom LLM fine-tuning — Airtrain enables AI teams to build and deploy scalable, precise, data-intensive AI workflows easily while reducing operational costs. Built by Machine Learning veterans from Cruise and Instacart, today Airtraintechnology is trusted by AI professionals in a wide range of global industries. For more information, visit https://airtrain.ai or follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AirtrainAI or YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@AirtrainAI. | $3.2M | Seed | Nov 17, 2022 |  |
| Season Health | Season is a platform that offers personalized nutrition planning for consumers. It integrates technology with advice from users' registered dietitians to help them get more out of their nutrition and make the most out of mealtime every day. The platform recommends what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner based on nutritional needs, foodpreferences, and budget. | $34M | Series A | Apr 04, 2022 |  |
| Ascend | Ascend is a modern, all-in-one payments solution purpose-built for insurance. We automate insurance payments end-to-end — from online customer payments including premium financing to the distribution of commissions and carrier payables. We help digital distributors sell more insurance by simplifying operations, reducing payment friction anddelivering the modern checkout experience customers expect. | $5.5M | Seed | Sep 15, 2021 |  |
| Rootly | Rootly provides incident management solutions designed to streamline operations and reduce response times for organizations. Their platform helps teams manage incidents efficiently by automating processes, creating structured workflows, and enabling real-time collaboration. Rootly’s system integrates with existing tools to centralize information,allowing teams to respond quickly and resolve issues with minimal disruption. By offering features like post-incident analysis and automated alerts, Rootly supports organizations in improving operational resilience and reducing downtime. The platform is tailored to support teams in managing complex incidents while maintaining alignment with broader business goals. | $3.2M | Seed | Jul 08, 2021 |  |
| Loft | Loft is a transactional marketplace for residential real estate that helps manage the home buying and selling process.Founded by repeat entrepreneurs in 2018, Loft is Brazil’s first transactional marketplace for residential real estate, facilitating the purchase and sale of properties on behalf of individuals, brokers, and two publicly listedREITs managed by the company. By leveraging proprietary transaction data and an end-to-end digital workflow, Loft is bringing the Brazilian homebuying experience into the e-commerce age while integrating a multitude of adjacent service offerings.Loft was founded in 2018 and is based in São Paulo, Brazil. | $100M | Series D | Apr 22, 2021 |  |
| Loft | Loft is a transactional marketplace for residential real estate that helps manage the home buying and selling process.Founded by repeat entrepreneurs in 2018, Loft is Brazil’s first transactional marketplace for residential real estate, facilitating the purchase and sale of properties on behalf of individuals, brokers, and two publicly listedREITs managed by the company. By leveraging proprietary transaction data and an end-to-end digital workflow, Loft is bringing the Brazilian homebuying experience into the e-commerce age while integrating a multitude of adjacent service offerings.Loft was founded in 2018 and is based in São Paulo, Brazil. | $100M | Series D | Apr 22, 2021 |  |
| Shef | Shef is a homemade food marketplace that helps local cooks to make a meaningful income from home by selling authentic, homemade dishes to their neighbors. The company was founded by Alvin Salehi and Joey Grassia in 2019 and operates in seven markets, including San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. | $8.8M | Seed | Aug 21, 2020 |  |
| Shef | Shef is a homemade food marketplace that helps local cooks to make a meaningful income from home by selling authentic, homemade dishes to their neighbors. The company was founded by Alvin Salehi and Joey Grassia in 2019 and operates in seven markets, including San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. | $8.8M | Seed | Aug 20, 2020 |  |

9 of 9 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Y Combinator](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/y-combinator) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Craft Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/craft-ventures) — VC Fund, 3 deals together
- [Amplify Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/amplify-partners) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Baillie Gifford](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/baillie-gifford) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Caffeinated Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/caffeinated-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [M13](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/m13) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

## About Instacart

VC Fund · San Francisco, United States

Instacart is a grocery delivery startup that delivers in as short as an hour. It focuses on delivering groceries and home essentials, Instacart already has over 500,000 items from local stores in its catalog. Customers can choose from a variety of local stores including Safeway, Whole Foods, Super Fresh, Harris Teeter, Shaw's, Mariano's,Jewel-Osco, Stanley's, and Costco. Customers can mix items from multiple stores into one order. Instacart has raised funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Canaan Partners besides other participants.Instacart was founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco in California.

5 contacts available at Instacart.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Arnaud Ferreri | Senior Director Of Engineering - International | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/arnaud-ferreri |
| Brandon Leonardo | Co-founder | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/brandon-leonardo |
| David Sobota | Vice President, Corporate Development, Instacart | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/david-sobota |
| Fidji Simo | CEO | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/fidji-simo |
| Max Mullen | Co-Founder | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/max-mullen |

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## FAQ

### What does Brandon Leonardo invest in?

Brandon Leonardo invests primarily in Artificial Intelligence, Software and Marketplace startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 9 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Brandon Leonardo's check size?

Brandon Leonardo typically joins rounds of $3.2M–$8.8M at Seed and $100M–$100M at Series D. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Brandon Leonardo participates in.

### When did Brandon Leonardo last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Brandon Leonardo closed in May 2023. Shizune tracks 9 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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