Upfront Ventures
VC Fund
Santa Monica, United States
Upfront Ventures is a VC fund in Santa Monica focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Upfront Ventures is proud to be an early investor and long-term partner to the most exciting founders and startups. Founded in 1996 in Los Angeles with investing professionals based in LA, San Francisco, and Paris, Upfront has backed standout teams across all technology sectors, including Ring (acq. by Amazon), TrueCar (NASDAQ: TRUE), Bird, Maker Studios (acq by Disney), GOAT, Apeel Sciences, thredUP, Invoca and Kyriba (acq by Bridgepoint). We invest about half of our capital in the fast-growing Southern California ecosystem, with the balance across the country as well as investments in Europe and Israel. Upfront Ventures is led by Managing Partners Yves Sisteron, Mark Suster, and Kara Nortman.
- Total investments:
- 450
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 36%
- Fund size:
- $3.4M
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Upfront Ventures invests in
Stages Upfront Ventures invests in
Countries Upfront Ventures invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| See all 13 contacts → | |||
Round size
- Seed
- $2M–$9M
- Series A
- $3M–$25M
- Series B
- $8M–$43M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 53 (12%)
- Artificial Intelligence 34 (8%)
- E-Commerce 33 (7%)
- Information Technology 27 (6%)
- Health Care 25 (6%)
Stage
- Seed 118 (26%)
- Series A 107 (24%)
- Series B 59 (13%)
- Series C 30 (7%)
- Funding Round 18 (4%)
Country
- United States 207 (46%)
- France 4 (1%)
- United Kingdom 2 (0%)
- Canada 1 (0%)
- Germany 1 (0%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Kobie Fuller
General Partner
|
General Partner | Total investments: 18 | Find email | |
Seksom Suriyapa
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 1 | Find email | |
Yves Sisteron
Managing Partner and Founding Partner
|
Managing Partner and Founding Partner | Total investments: 33 | Find email | |
Aditi Maliwal
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 7 | Find email | |
Conor Hayward
Analyst
|
Analyst | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
| See all 13 team members → | ||||
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fortastra is a travel agency cuurently working in stealth mode. | $32.6M / Series A / Oct 08, 2026 | ||
| Rainmaker employs cutting-edge technology to generate rain, replenish water sources, and address drought challenges in a sustainable and effective manner. | $100M / Series B / Sep 21, 2026 | ||
| Ayble is a clinically-backed digital health platform that uses data-driven machine learning technology to provide comprehensive, precision dietary analysis and holistic care for people with GI conditions. | $16M / Series A / Sep 16, 2026 | ||
| Endeavor Optical Networks is a space communications startup building laser-based satellite links to move large amounts of data between continents as an alternative to undersea fiber cables. It builds dedicated intercontinental data-transfer infrastructure using optical satellites, targeting AI labs, hyperscalers, and telecom operators. | $10.8M / Seed / Aug 04, 2026 | ||
| Andrenam is a defense technology and artificial intelligence company that develops an AI-powered distributed maritime sensing network for persistent underwater and surface domain awareness. The company builds autonomous acoustic sensing systems that detect, classify, and track maritime activity in real time, providing continuous intelligence fordefense, maritime security, and autonomous naval operations. Founded by former aerospace engineers, Andrenam focuses on strengthening maritime situational awareness through scalable, networked sensing infrastructure.Its platform combines AI-powered sonar processing, distributed acoustic sensing, edge and cloud computing, autonomous sensor networks, real-time data streaming, underwater target detection, and maritime intelligence into a unified system. Andrenam's Pearl smart buoys continuously collect and transmit acoustic data, enabling operators to detect and track submarines, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), and other maritime assets with low-latency analytics. The platform integrates AI-driven signal processing with distributed hardware to support persistent monitoring across large maritime environments. | $18M / Series A / Jul 23, 2026 | ||
| Critical Energy is an energy based firm that generate electricity with the help of heat through modular and geothermal power plant. | $19M / Seed / Jun 17, 2026 | ||
| Bland AI provides a voice AI platform that enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage automated phone agents for inbound and outbound conversations. The platform supports voice calls, SMS, web chat, and messaging channels while maintaining shared context across customer interactions. It includes tools for conversation design, workflowtesting, call monitoring, integrations with CRM, scheduling, and telephony systems, as well as APIs for custom development. Bland AI also offers voice cloning, multilingual communication capabilities, security controls, compliance-focused features, and deployment options designed for industries that handle regulated customer communications. | $50M / Series C / Jun 16, 2026 | ||
| OurSky is a developer platform for space applications that provides observational data and analysis of objects and activities in space. | $90M / Series A / May 28, 2026 | ||
| Kubera Health is a healthcare technology company that develops an AI-native platform focused on financial performance management across payor-provider relationships. The company builds software that translates healthcare contracts into structured, computable rules and connects them directly to claims and payment data. Its platform providescontinuous monitoring of reimbursement activity, enabling organizations to compare expected payments against actual payments and identify variances. Kubera Health also supports contract modeling and scenario analysis to help healthcare organizations evaluate the financial impact of rate changes and policy adjustments. The system is designed to improve visibility into complex contracting arrangements by centralizing agreement terms, fee schedules, and payment logic into a unified data model. In addition, Kubera Health offers analytics and workflow tools that support negotiation, revenue integrity, and contract performance tracking across healthcare organizations. | $6.5M / Seed / May 28, 2026 | ||
| Itera provides digital consulting, AI, cloud, software development and technology services for businesses across industries. | $12M / Seed / May 27, 2026 | ||
| See all 450 investments → | |||
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FAQ
What does Upfront Ventures invest in?
Upfront Ventures invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and E-Commerce startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 450 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 Upfront Ventures invest in?
Upfront Ventures typically joins rounds of $2M–$9M at Seed, $3M–$25M at Series A and $8M–$43M at Series B. These are whole funding-round sizes, not Upfront Ventures's own check, which is rarely disclosed: the 10th–90th percentile of the confirmed public funding rounds Upfront Ventures took part in.
How do I contact Upfront Ventures?
Public channels for Upfront Ventures 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 Upfront Ventures?
The team at Upfront Ventures includes Kobie Fuller (General Partner), Seksom Suriyapa (Partner) and Yves Sisteron (Managing Partner and Founding Partner), among 13 team members tracked by Shizune. 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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