# Candou Ventures

> Candou Ventures is a VC fund backing Artificial Intelligence and FinTech. See 17 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Palo Alto, United States
- Total investments: 17
- Last investment: Jun 2026
- Lead investor: 18%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/candou-ventures/
- Website: http://candouventures.com/

Candou Ventures is a VC fund in Palo Alto focused on Artificial Intelligence and FinTech. Candou is an early seed round firm focused on supporting entrepreneurs with unique and defensible ideas. They are uniquely positioned to help shape your plans into investible businesses, fund your seed round and then help you raise money from tier 1 VCs.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for Candou Ventures. Shizune tracks 3 team members at Candou Ventures. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/candou-ventures?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $2M–$33M |
| Series A | $11M–$60M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Artificial Intelligence | 6 | 35% |
| FinTech | 2 | 12% |
| Internet | 2 | 12% |
| Payments | 2 | 12% |
| Software | 2 | 12% |

31 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 8 | 47% |
| Series A | 5 | 29% |
| Series B | 1 | 6% |
| Series C | 1 | 6% |
| Convertible Note | 1 | 6% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 12 | 71% |
| Canada | 1 | 6% |

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Faraj Aalaei | Founding General Partner | 2 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/faraj-aalaei |
| Shahin Hedayat | Founding General partner | 1 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/shahin-hedayat |
| Susan Akbarpour | Managing Partner | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/susan-akbarpour |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| SignalRank | SignalRank Corporation is a FinTech company in the Venture space. It focuses on the seed stage asset class and uses data analytics to allocate capital to the best seed fund managers for their top performing companies. GPRank and CompanyRank are two proprietary algorithms it leverages to automate capital allocation. The company invests from balancesheet. Its customers are seed stage investors with outstanding companies in their portfolio. | $26.5M | Series A | Jun 09, 2026 |  |
| Cognichip | Cognichip is an AI-first deep tech company focused on transforming the semiconductor industry by revolutionizing how chips are designed. The company has developed Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®), the world’s first physics-informed AI foundation model specifically tailored for semiconductor design | $60M | Series A | Apr 01, 2026 |  |
| Cognichip | Cognichip is an AI-first deep tech company focused on transforming the semiconductor industry by revolutionizing how chips are designed. The company has developed Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®), the world’s first physics-informed AI foundation model specifically tailored for semiconductor design | $33M | Seed | May 15, 2025 |  |
| Exostellar | Exostellar provides a platform that enables users to enhance cloud computing for greater cost efficiency by utilising its exclusive licence to patent-pending technologies created at Cornell University and combining artificial intelligence and machine learning. | $10.8M | Series A | Feb 11, 2025 |  |
| Exostellar | Exostellar provides a platform that enables users to enhance cloud computing for greater cost efficiency by utilising its exclusive licence to patent-pending technologies created at Cornell University and combining artificial intelligence and machine learning. | $15M | Series A | Sep 13, 2023 |  |
| NinjaTech AI | NinjaTech AI is a business developing the first genuine next-generation personal assistant using generative AI. | $6.7M | Seed | May 02, 2023 |  |
| Movellus | Movellus develops process portable and ultra-low power analog IPs. Its roducts include PLLs, DLLs, and LDOs, that are optimized per design. | $23M | Series B | Sep 20, 2022 |  |
| Medsien | Medsien offers comprehensive remote care management services powered by artificial intelligence, integrating various care management programs into a single platform. The company focuses on enhancing patient engagement and outcomes through personalized support and streamlined operations. Medsien's technology enables healthcare providers toefficiently manage chronic care, remote patient monitoring, and related services, ultimately improving the patient experience. | $4.3M | Seed | Jun 21, 2022 |  |
| Bodo.ai | Bodo.ai is an extreme-performance parallel compute platform for data analytics, scaling past 10,000 cores and petabytes of data with unprecedented efficiency and linear scaling. Leveraging unique automatic parallelization and the first inferential compiler, Bodo is helping F500 customers solve some of the world’s most massive data analysisproblems. And doing so in a fraction of traditional time, complexity, and cost, all while leveraging the simplicity and flexibility of native Python. Developers can deploy Bodo on any infrastructure, from a laptop to a public cloud. Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Pittsburgh, PA, the team of passionate technologists aims to radically accelerate the world of data analytics. http://bodo.ai #LetsBodo | $22.5M | Series A | Dec 15, 2021 |  |
| SignalRank | SignalRank Corporation is a FinTech company in the Venture space. It focuses on the seed stage asset class and uses data analytics to allocate capital to the best seed fund managers for their top performing companies. GPRank and CompanyRank are two proprietary algorithms it leverages to automate capital allocation. The company invests from balancesheet. Its customers are seed stage investors with outstanding companies in their portfolio. | $5.1M | Seed | Nov 14, 2021 |  |

10 of 17 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Alpha Intelligence Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alpha-intelligence-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Artiman Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/artiman-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Cambium Capital Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/cambium-capital-partners) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Celesta Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/celesta-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [FPV Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/fpv-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [INP Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/inp-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

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## FAQ

### What does Candou Ventures invest in?

Candou Ventures invests primarily in Artificial Intelligence, FinTech and Internet startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 17 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 Candou Ventures's check size?

Candou Ventures typically joins rounds of $2M–$33M at Seed and $11M–$60M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Candou Ventures participates in.

### How do I contact Candou Ventures?

Public channels for Candou Ventures include LinkedIn and the website linked on this profile. 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.

### Who are the partners at Candou Ventures?

The team at Candou Ventures includes Faraj Aalaei (Founding General Partner), Shahin Hedayat (Founding General partner) and Susan Akbarpour (Managing Partner). The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.

### 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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