Foothill Ventures Fund III

United States

Pre Seed

About Foothill Ventures Fund III

Foothill Ventures Fund III is a venture capital firm based in United States, focusing on Pre-Seed stage investments. The fund actively supports founders building innovative solutions in AI/ML, SaaS, providing strategic guidance and capital to help startups scale.

Investment Focus

Location / RegionUnited States

Funding StagePre Seed

Industry Focus

Ai Ml

Saas

Investor Signals Profile

active

Sweet Spot

Deep tech founders solving AI infrastructure, agents, memory or edge deployment

legal tech

applied AI

enterprise software

deep tech

AI infrastructure

Physical AI

robotics

manufacturing automation

open models

agentic AI

long-running agents

edge computing

memory infrastructure

Bullish Signals

Portfolio co Supio actively hiring, scalingexternal

Launched deep-tech newsletter, signals convictionlinkedin

Expanding thesis: compute → interconnect stacklinkedin

Silicon photonics & CPO on radarlinkedin

60%+ datacenter energy: data movement focuslinkedin

'The Interconnect' newsletter now livelinkedin

Copper limits = structural shift thesis forminglinkedin

400x model growth: data-movement thesis validatedlinkedin

Value reallocation: compute → packaging & designlinkedin

CarbonSix Series A: Physical AI deployment validatedlinkedin

Portfolio focus: real-world deployment over research demosexternal

Hosted AI Infra founder dinner, ecosystem conveninglinkedin

Open models + post-training: default stack emerginglinkedin

Long-running agents production-ready in coding workflowslinkedin

Memory portability & interpretability: next battlegroundlinkedin

Partnering with Nebius, Subconscious on eventslinkedin

Contrarian Signals

Thesis broadening — focus risk emerginglinkedin

Agent consumer/SMB experience still wide openlinkedin

Founder Do's

Build in AI infrastructure or interconnect stack

Show structural market shift thesis

Connect to data-movement bottleneck problem

Address energy efficiency in data centers

Work on optics, photonics, or CPO technologies

Deploy Physical AI with real-world measurable customer value

Build data flywheel via field deployments

Design bounded agent workflows, keep humans in loop

Focus on portable, interpretable memory systems

Build production agentic coding solutions

Prioritize recruiting & team composition early

Founder Don'ts

Pitch incremental compute-only improvements

Ignore energy efficiency angle

Ignore interconnect or packaging layer

Over-index on research demos vs. production deployment

Chase full autonomy — bounded workflows win

Key GPs & Partners

Jack O'Brien

Partner

community builderAI infraoperator

Hongyin Luo

Partner

deep techinfrastructuretechnical

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Fund Overview

Fund Size$110M

Saves0

Website

Key People

Eric Rosenblum

Jack O'BrienPartner

Hongyin LuoPartner

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