Shankar Chandran
Managing Director & SVP @ Samsung Catalyst Fund
San Francisco, United States
Shankar Chandran is a Series D investor at Samsung Catalyst Fund in San Francisco focused on Enterprise Software and Artificial Intelligence. Shankar Chandran is vice president at Samsung Electronics and head of the Samsung Catalyst Fund, at the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC). The SSIC is based in Menlo Park, California and is focused on accelerating innovation for Samsung Electronics. Shankar is responsible for early stage and disruptive venture capital investments intechnologies targeted at high growth sectors such as cloud infrastructure, mobile technology and security, digital health, next-generation user interfaces, and the internet of things. Previously, he was part of the founding team at Panorama Capital and has been an active venture investor for 12 years at Panorama Capital and JP Morgan Partners.Shankar has held various engineering, business development and management roles at Applied Materials, Inc., and has been granted eight patents as the primary inventor. He also serves on the Advisory Board at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University, and has served as a director or observer on the boards of over ten companies. Shankar holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), India, an MS in Materials Science from Arizona State University, and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Total investments:
- 6
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 50%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Shankar Chandran invests in
Stages Shankar Chandran invests in
Countries Shankar Chandran invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
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| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
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Investment Focus
Industry
- Enterprise Software 3 (50%)
- Artificial Intelligence 3 (50%)
- Software 2 (33%)
- Machine Learning 2 (33%)
- IaaS 1 (17%)
Stage
- Series D 2 (33%)
- Seed 1 (17%)
- Series B 1 (17%)
- Series C 1 (17%)
Country
- United States 4 (67%)
- India 1 (17%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nace.AI system generates small, task-specific AI models, offering enterprises alternative to traditional large language models. | $21.5M / Seed / May 05, 2026 | ||
| Ati Motors is an all-electric autonomous industrial vehicle maker. | $20M / Series B / Jan 22, 2025 | ||
| Rescale is a cloud simulation platform that enables research scientists and engineers to build, compute, analyze, and scale simulations.The high-performance computing cloud platform delivers intelligent computing for digital R&D and enables more than 300 customers from startups to Fortune 50 enterprises to accelerate design cycles and time tomarket. Rescale gives research scientists and engineers the ability to run their simulation and artificial intelligence workloads on the cloud provider of their choice, using specialized hardware architectures and software templates optimized for their use cases, without any set-up or maintenance. Investors such as Initialized Capital, Keen Venture Partners, SineWave Ventures, Data Collective, ITV Ventures, Jump Capital, and M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), as well as Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Quiet Capital, Streamlined Ventures, Translink Capital, Two Roads Group, Y Combinator, Hitachi Ventures, Nautilus Venture Partners, NVIDIA, Republic Labs, and Samsung Catalyst Fund backs Rescale.In 2011, Joris Poort and Adam McKenzie headquartered the company in San Francisco, California. | $55M / Series C / Nov 23, 2021 | ||
| Rescale is a cloud simulation platform that enables research scientists and engineers to build, compute, analyze, and scale simulations.The high-performance computing cloud platform delivers intelligent computing for digital R&D and enables more than 300 customers from startups to Fortune 50 enterprises to accelerate design cycles and time tomarket. Rescale gives research scientists and engineers the ability to run their simulation and artificial intelligence workloads on the cloud provider of their choice, using specialized hardware architectures and software templates optimized for their use cases, without any set-up or maintenance. Investors such as Initialized Capital, Keen Venture Partners, SineWave Ventures, Data Collective, ITV Ventures, Jump Capital, and M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), as well as Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Quiet Capital, Streamlined Ventures, Translink Capital, Two Roads Group, Y Combinator, Hitachi Ventures, Nautilus Venture Partners, NVIDIA, Republic Labs, and Samsung Catalyst Fund backs Rescale.In 2011, Joris Poort and Adam McKenzie headquartered the company in San Francisco, California. | $50M / Series C / Feb 02, 2021 | ||
| Datrium is the leader in tier 1 hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) for hybrid clouds. Datrium converges tier 1 HCI, scale-out backup and cloud disaster recovery for vastly simpler administration, protection of hybrid cloud infrastructure, and higher IO performance than available with traditional HCI alternatives.Founded in 2012, Datrium isheadquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. | $60M / Series D / Sep 13, 2018 | ||
| SoundHound AI develops a voice AI platform that enables brands to create customized conversational experiences for their products and services. The platform allows companies to voice-enable their offerings while providing access to valuable data and analytics for improved customer interactions. SoundHound AI aims to enhance user engagement throughnatural voice interactions across various industries. | $75M / Series D / Jan 31, 2017 |
Co-Investors
About Samsung Catalyst Fund
The Samsung Catalyst Fund is Samsung Electronics’ evergreen multi-stage venture capital fund that invests in the new data economy and strategic ideas for Samsung’s mobile, device solutions and consumer electronics groups. Investment spans across Automotive, Robotics, Digital Health, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Infrastructure, and Device-Level Solutions. Through Samsung Catalyst Fund, entrepreneurs are enabled by Samsung’s global brand, manufacturing and distribution, domain expertise, recruiting network, and world-class Innovation Fellows for advice and mentorship.
Samsung Catalyst Fund Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Amit Shofar
Investment Director
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Barrett Parkman
Director, Startup and VC Ecosystem
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David Goldschmidt
Vice President, Managing Director, and Head of the Fund
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Jeesung Lee
Head of Finance and Accounting
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Jin Ho Ahn
Principal
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FAQ
What does Shankar Chandran invest in?
Shankar Chandran invests primarily in Enterprise Software, Artificial Intelligence and Software startups, most often at Series D and Seed stage. Most of the 6 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 Shankar Chandran?
Public channels for Shankar Chandran include LinkedIn. 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 Shankar Chandran last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Shankar Chandran closed in May 2026. Shizune tracks 6 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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