Essence VC
VC Fund
Seattle, United States
Essence VC is a VC fund in Seattle focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Enterprise fund focusing on 1st time technical founders building in the infra / developer space
- Total investments:
- 59
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 3%
- Fund size:
- $8M
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Essence VC invests in
Stages Essence VC invests in
Countries Essence VC invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Round size
- Seed
- $3.1M–$17M
- Pre-Seed
- $650k–$4.5M
- Series A
- $14M–$27M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 27 (46%)
- Artificial Intelligence 27 (46%)
- Information Technology 13 (22%)
- Machine Learning 9 (15%)
- SaaS 6 (10%)
Stage
- Seed 34 (58%)
- Series A 12 (20%)
- Pre-Seed 9 (15%)
- Series B 3 (5%)
- Funding Round 1 (2%)
Country
- United States 40 (68%)
- Germany 2 (3%)
- Israel 1 (2%)
- Denmark 1 (2%)
- Australia 1 (2%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Timothy Chen
General Partner
|
General Partner | Total investments: 17 | Find email |
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monid is an all-in-one tool registry that connects AI agents to over 1,700 tools and APIs through a single integration. | $7.7M / Seed / Oct 06, 2026 | ||
| Namespace accelerates the development workflow of fast-moving software engineering teams. | $42M / Series B / Oct 05, 2026 | ||
| RadiantOps solves AI adoption for software teams. RadiantOps surfaces the work worthy of an engineering leader's attention, names what changed and who understood it, and compares it with the team's own history. Engineering leaders see whether agents are making their teams faster, what that is doing to quality, and what it costs, across every coding agent in the organization. Those answers justify a renewal, a headcount plan, or an AI budget. Every answer threads back to ground truth. RadiantOps reads the commits, reviews, tickets and agent runs a team already produces (GitHub, Jira, Slack, and the coding agents themselves, including Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Codex) and ties them to the work they belong to. We surface the change, attach the evidence, and leave the verdict with the people who know the terrain. | $7M / Seed / Sep 16, 2026 | ||
| Fearn is an AI-native patent drafting platform that lets inventors and companies prepare patent applications in minutes instead of 50+ hours, with flat-rate pricing and no third‑party AI models. | $5.5M / Seed / Jun 10, 2026 | ||
| Comfy develops and maintains open-source software centered on generative AI workflows, primarily through its core product, ComfyUI, a node-based application for building and managing AI-driven content creation pipelines. The platform enables users to construct visual workflows that generate images, videos, 3D assets, and audio by connecting modularcomponents, enabling repeatable, adjustable outputs rather than one-off prompts. Its tools include a workflow engine, extension manager, custom node registry, and supporting interfaces such as command-line utilities and automation features, which together form a flexible ecosystem for AI development and usage. The company emphasizes enabling users to create and customize their own solutions, often without requiring coding, and supports both local execution and cloud-based usage depending on user needs. Comfy's software is used by a broad range of individuals and teams, including developers, artists, and organizations, to build reproducible and scalable generative AI workflows. | $30M / Series B / Apr 24, 2026 | ||
| Unkey operates as an open-source API authentication and authorization platform, primarily catering to user-facing APIs. The platform enables developers to create, verify, and manage API keys with low latency. Unkey's services are designed to help developers secure, manage, and scale their APIs. The company also offers an Elixir SDK, providinga simple example of its use. Unkey is also involved in solving API authentication for the next generation of developers. | $4.5M / Seed / Apr 23, 2026 | ||
| Standard Kernel builds AI technology that makes the core software running on GPUs and other accelerators faster and more efficient. | $20M / Seed / Mar 11, 2026 | ||
| Magic Patterns provides software tools that enable teams to prototype product ideas using AI-generated designs. The platform includes features for creating SVG and CSS patterns, gradients, and organic shapes, which can be applied to digital assets such as product visuals and social media content. Users can modify components and designs within theplatform’s editor and export outputs to React or Figma formats. Magic Patterns also offers a Chrome extension that converts website elements into React components for use in development workflows. | $6M / Series A / Nov 11, 2025 | ||
| Nilo is a collaborative 3D platform that works across desktop, mobile, Discord, and Telegram. It combines generative AI with world-building tools, allowing users to generate assets, characters, animations, and code from natural language or drawings. The result: a radically simplified creation experience that lowers the barrier to entry andaccelerates how quickly new ideas can be built, tested, and shared.It’s creation at the speed of culture: whether spinning up a game inspired by today’s viral sound, turning a group chat joke into a playable world or crafting a custom hangout, Nilo transforms imagination into interaction — instantly and collaboratively.Nilo’s key features include:Text-to-3D generation: Create characters, environments, and code from prompts or images. Browser-Based: Nilo runs entirely in your browser - no installs, no downloads, no friction. Voice-enabled coding: A built-in AI-powered code editor that supports spoken commands and natural language for playful, social programming. Real-time multiplayer: Co-create and play with friends instantly.Nilo was founded in April 2024, bringing together veterans from Fortnite, Twitch, YouTube, Snapchat, Microsoft, Adobe, Blizzard, VRChat, Rec Room, and major VFX projects such as Avatar and Star Wars. | $4M / Seed / Sep 24, 2025 | ||
| Cline is a developer of an open‑source AI coding agent that automates software creation tasks within integrated development environments. It supports planning, file editing, terminal operations, and web browsing, all under user supervision. Cline integrates with multiple AI models and uses client-side architecture so code and API usage stay underuser control. The product includes Plan Mode and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration, enabling exploration of codebases, defining project‑specific rules, and accessing external systems. It also offers team features like shared credits, admin controls, usage analytics, and audit logging, built on top of the same transparent, open‑source core. | $27M / Series A / Jul 31, 2025 | ||
| See all 59 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Essence VC invest in?
Essence VC invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 59 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What round sizes does Essence VC invest in?
Essence VC typically joins rounds of $3.1M–$17M at Seed, $650k–$4.5M at Pre-Seed and $14M–$27M at Series A. These are whole funding-round sizes, not Essence VC's own check, which is rarely disclosed: the 10th–90th percentile of the confirmed public funding rounds Essence VC took part in.
How do I contact Essence VC?
Public channels for Essence VC include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) 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 Essence VC?
The team at Essence VC includes Timothy Chen (General 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 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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