Fund profile / United States

Foothill Ventures Fund III

Geography: United States
Stage: Pre-Seed
Fund size: $110M
Focus: AI/ML and SaaS
Signals: Published

N°01 / About

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.

N°02 / Thesis

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, robotics, 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

photonics

advanced materials

commodity hardware scaling

non-model compounding assets

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

GP recruiting robotics PhDs from Carnegie Mellonlinkedin

VP at CMU commercialization: academic-to-market pipelinelinkedin

Physical AI scaling contrarian take: non-obvious assets compoundlinkedin

Commodity hardware, non-model compounding thesis liveexternal

Contrarian Signals

Thesis broadening — focus risk emerginglinkedin

Agent consumer/SMB experience still wide openlinkedin

Physical AI scaling curve skepticism publishedexternal

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

Commercialize academic research with founder experience

Identify non-model, non-robot compounding assets

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

Assume model or robot is primary value driver

45 signals on Foothill Ventures Fund III

20 bullish · 3 contrarian · 13 pitch do's · 6 don'ts · 3 GP profiles, each with its source. From €9/month, cancel anytime.

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Facts

Fund Overview

Fund Size$110M

Saves0

Website

People

Key People

Eric Rosenblum

Jack O'BrienPartner

Hongyin LuoPartner

Maximilian Von PoelnitzGeneral Partner

N°04 / See also

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