# Shankar Chandran

> Shankar Chandran is a Series D investor at Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center backing Enterprise Software. See 6 investments, check sizes, portfolio and…

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/samsung-strategy-and-innovation-center)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 6
- Last investment: May 2026
- Lead investor: 50%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shankar-chandran-923a63/

Shankar Chandran is a Series D investor at Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center 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.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for Shankar Chandran: work email, personal email, work phone, personal phone and socials. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-email/shankar-chandran?utm_source=investor_profile

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Enterprise Software | 3 | 50% |
| Artificial Intelligence | 3 | 50% |
| Software | 2 | 33% |
| Machine Learning | 2 | 33% |
| IaaS | 1 | 17% |

18 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series D | 2 | 33% |
| Seed | 1 | 17% |
| Series B | 1 | 17% |
| Series C | 1 | 17% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 4 | 67% |
| India | 1 | 17% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Nace.AI | 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 | Ati Motors is an all-electric autonomous industrial vehicle maker. | $20M | Series B | Jan 22, 2025 |  |
| Rescale | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 |  |

6 of 6 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Fort Ross Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/fortross-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [General Catalyst](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/general-catalyst-partners) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Hitachi Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/hitachi-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Initialized Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/initialized-capital) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [M12 - Microsoft's Venture Fund](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/m12) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [M12 - Microsoft's Venture Fund](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/microsoftventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together

## About Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center

VC Fund · Menlo Park, United States

Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) is focused on identifying and nurturing new technologies in promising new areas such as mobile health and wellness, data center/cloud computing, Internet of Things, human-computer interface technologies, privacy/security, and more. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with offices in Korea, Israeland the U.K., SSIC’s mission is to develop and accelerate groundbreaking technologies through open innovation working in collaboration with entrepreneurs and strategic partners to enhance people’s lives and open new possibilities.

5 contacts available at Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Rutie Adar | Business Development | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/rutie-adar |
| Shankar Chandran | Vice President, Catalyst Fund | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/shankar-chandran |
| Curtis Sasaki | VP of Ecosystems and iOT General Manager | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/curtis-sasaki |
| Ekaterina Almasque | Managing Director | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ekaterina-almasque |
| Jeanine Jue | Head of Developer Experience, Samsung ARTIK Cloud for IoT | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jeanine-jue |

## Similar investors

### Similar stage
- [Sigma Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sigma-partners) — VC Fund
- [EDBI](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/edbi) — VC Fund
- [Trifecta Capital Advisors](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/trifecta-capital-advisors) — VC Fund

## 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 Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

# About Shizune
Shizune.co is an investor database. Core features:
- 48,091 startup investors (angels, VCs, accelerators, and others)
- Email, phone, LinkedIn (for intros), socials, and other contact data
- Updated daily from public funding news
- CSV and Excel export

The User can access the full database FOR FREE after signing up: shizune.co