Partner @drapervc @draperdragon Deal @oklo @colossal @polymarket @iceye @otter_ai @ledger @venusaerospace @cardano @scoutai_ @xanaduai @rigetti @radiantnuclear
Menlo Park, CA
Joined April 2013
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A strong demographic mix, talented and educated youth, and aggressive government investment... the long-term ingredients in Saudi Arabia are all there.
That was the heart of my fireside with Saeed Alajou of COTU Ventures at @SuperReturn Middle East, on Saudi Arabia's speed and scale. We are proud to have been a long-time investor in the region, and our work with Saudi youth from 2019 to 2024 tells the story: 149 founders supported, 500+ jobs created, $15M+ raised, and 2 Draper-backed companies.
The best part is the people behind those numbers. Watching this generation of Saudi founders and leaders build is the strongest bull case there is.
andy tang retweeted
Two programs kicked off at Draper University this week: Hero Training and the DraperU x @Cardano Apex Growth Accelerator! 🚀
Our founders have arrived on campus, ready for weeks of building, growth, fundraising, and making connections in Silicon Valley.
Excited to welcome our new Hero Training cohort and the Apex Accelerator founders joining us in partnership with @Cardano_CF and @OrionFund!
A few moments from their first week on campus 📸
Welcome to DraperU. Let’s get to work!
Twenty years ago, when I started investing in China, "sovereign data" meant two things: payments and maps. Today the list reads semiconductors, AI, and aerospace. Sovereignty went from a compliance footnote to an investment thesis, and it was the thread running through both of my sessions at @SuperReturn Middle East in Dubai.
On the data and tech sovereignty panel, with @anna_tutova of AI Crypto Minds, Ibrahim AlJallaf of @Inception_42, and Rodrigo Ferreira of Vinthera, my main point: the US-led and China-led ecosystems will each have to reinvent the wheel for every layer of the AI stack, from semiconductors to data centers to models to applications. Two of everything. Which is why I'd argue the world will have more unicorns and fewer decacorns... or, correcting for inflation, more decacorns and fewer centacorns. And the GCC sits in a unique position: one of the few places whose capital is welcome in both ecosystems.
The next day I led an LP/GP roundtable on defense strategy and security, and the room was full, for a topic considered off-limits not long ago. My opening point: @VenusAerospace, @FirehawkAero, @iceye_global... when we backed them at @DraperVC, we underwrote them as commercial companies. Then the geopolitical situation changed, and government buyers showed up. We didn't pivot into defense. Defense came to our portfolio. With many large investors sensing the AI trade maturing, I expect dual-use technologies to be a leading candidate for the next investment narrative.
Thank you, SuperReturn for a great conference, and to my fellow panellists and everyone who joined the sessions.
Some of the best companies we see weren’t started by serial entrepreneurs. They were started by the person who was in the room when the discovery happened and refused to let it just stay paper.
@cloverleafbio is one of those. @a_draycott spent his PhD at @Yale University in the lab of Wendy Gilbert (now chair of Cloverleaf’s scientific advisory board) mapping RNA modifications, a corner of biology most of the industry wasn’t looking at.
That work pointed to an uncomfortable question: what if one of oncology’s oldest drug classes has been working through a different mechanism than we believed for sixty years? In 2025, Austin and his co-founder Cole Lewis left the lab and built a company around the answer. Thanks to Vicky Kuang for her “undercover” student work on the Yale University campus!
As a cancer survivor, I pay a different kind of attention to oncology companies, and what stands out about Austin is his optimism. Every time I call him with what I think is bad news, he explains why it’s actually good news. He always finds the silver lining. Building a new class of cancer therapeutics will take years and plenty of setbacks... that temperament is exactly what the long road requires.
One more thought, for the universities. This science was born in an academic lab and built by a recent graduate. When endowments ask whether venture capital helps their students, Cloverleaf is what the answer looks like: capital flowing into companies built by your own researchers, with the returns supporting the next generation of them.
Every year people ask if crypto conferences still matter. After a week at @TOKEN2049 Singapore, my answer is that the signal has never been better: fewer tourists, more builders, and hallway conversations about products and revenue instead of token prices. The industry grew up.
A highlight of the week was our Rooftop UTXO Pitch Night, hosted by @DraperDragon and the @Cardano_CF at LAVO. I had the pleasure of a fireside chat with my dear friend Hareesh Nair, CIO of TPC, on family offices and family businesses in Asia. One thing from that conversation worth repeating: family offices are true permanent capital. Pensions revolve over time, but families often don’t need the capital back... they want to build relationships across generations. TPC has been navigating cycles since the late 1800s. In venture, we think in 10-year funds and call it long term. That’s a useful dose of humility :)
And then the main event: nine startups (out of 49 applications) pitched live, covering everything from Bitcoin yield and payments to AI agents, digital identity, and tokenized assets, competing for up to $500K in funding. The quality was the real story... several of these teams already have products in market and revenue, not just decks.
Congratulations to every team that got on that stage. Thank you @F_Gregaard, @samizb, @maxime_bucaille, @aalicbarker, and both the Cardano and Draper teams for a great event.
@DraperVC @draper_u
andy tang retweeted
We're pumped to work with the Apex cohort and see the awesome things they deliver from Silicon Valley! 🔥🔥🔥
Meet the 8 teams joining Apex Growth Accelerator 🚀
From WhatsApp payments to AI agents that transact, they’re building the next wave of products on Cardano.
Kicking off today: 10 weeks of building, growth, and fundraising in Silicon Valley with Draper University, Cardano Foundation, and Orion Fund.
Meet the cohort ↓
draperuniversity.substack.co…
@KenomicAI : @raycotarrida @caralvmar
@chatterpay : @tomasdm_eth
@AscentRivals : @realgUbGuuB
@Ospree_io : @JavierTamashiro
@origamitech_ : @korrom18
@NOMADZxyz : @ivan_nomadz @vlad_nomadz
@MentionedMarket : @taylorferran
@MasumiNetwork : @Padierfind
Data used to be something companies managed. Now it's something countries claim. Every government is asking who actually controls their digital infrastructure, data, and compute... and I'd argue sovereignty is becoming as important to capital flows as interest rates.
On October 13 I'm joining the Tech, AI & VC Summit panel on data and tech sovereignty at @SuperReturn Middle East in Dubai. We'll get into how countries are approaching sovereignty in practice, how the Middle East is positioning itself between global technology blocs, and what the sovereignty push means for how capital gets deployed.
On day one of the conference, I'll also be leading a closed-door LP/GP session on defense strategy and security.
I'm in Dubai for the full conference, October 13-15 at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC. If you're an LP, family office, or founder in the region and want to meet, my inbox is open.
Something startups often struggle with is biz dev, with a major blocker being hiring and training sales staff fast enough to get revenue in the door. Now imagine anyone starting had a playbook of what everyone on the team knows - and the ability to practice on “live” sales calls with buyer personas and get immediate feedback from a coach. Plus the ability for an AI avatar to answer customer questions when they’re browsing in different time zones. It's AI automation with the sales process… without replacing the humans that close deals. And now @Zoom backs it, too.
Really couldn't be prouder of portco Avarra today!!
ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/av…
Talent is uniformly distributed in society. Opportunities are not. America's Startup is one way we're doing our part about it.
A warm welcome to the new @America250 Investor Council members: @CathieDWood, @PratherARK, @christine_tsai, @skg_accel, @billreichert, @SungerBiggs, @BiedermanRob, @Robert_Katz and others. We're all inspired by @RosieRios's original vision: support our nation's youth and democratize entrepreneurship in America.
I judged round one... those teams weren't waiting for permission to build. They were already building. Round two: over $1M in cash and prizes, up to $50K non-dilutive per team, finale in DC this December.
Undergrad founders: applications close Thursday, Oct 8, 7:59pm EDT. Link in first reply.
We're here to help founders fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams. Your part is to apply :)
More in press release here: businesswire.com/news/home/2…
andy tang retweeted
The next deep tech unicorns will come from founders building fundamentally strong companies, whatever the market is doing.
Talking about what sets them apart Tuesday in Osaka with @christine_tsai (@500GlobalVC), Adit Swarup (@generalcatalyst) and Ken Yoshida (@JETRO_jgc).
andy tang retweeted
For 250 years, America's story has been driven by people who took a risk on their own ideas. That's what entrepreneurship is: freedom and trust in action. As a member of the Investor Council for America's Startup (@America250) I want to see that same spirit from the next generation.
If you're an undergraduate student (or equivalent) at an accredited university, college, or trade school with an idea you're ready to build, this is your moment. Compete for a share of more than $1 million in cash and prizes, and get your idea in front of me and other leading names in tech and business.
1️⃣ Visit the America's Startup website at america250.org/americas-star…
2️⃣ Review the contest rules and confirm your eligibility
3️⃣ Grab your co-founder and submit your application by October 8
Kairos Health, a former @America250 America's Startup competitor, just got into @ycombinator's Fall 2026 cohort. They built an AI front desk for dental clinics and are now well on their way to scaling. Their story could be yours. If you're an undergrad with a big idea, apply by Oct 8 👇
america250.org/americas-star…
AI agents have created a new kind of business risk that almost nobody is covering yet: agents accumulate memory. Context, history, judgment built up over months of use. Lose that in an outage and you're not restarting an app but you're re-training a colleague almost from zero.
So it's great to see our portfolio company @ArpioRPO getting ahead of it. They just launched automated disaster recovery for agentic AI workloads on @amazon Bedrock, and the key piece is state recovery: the agent comes back with its memory, not as a blank slate. Full recovery in about an hour, where the average ransomware recovery drags on for three weeks.
The timing is right. @KPMG_US found that over half of large US companies are already running AI agents. Quietly, these systems have become critical infrastructure, and critical infrastructure deserves protection you can verify.
Exactly what drew us to Arpio when we joined their $15M Series A at @DraperVC earlier this year: Doug Neumann and Shaw Terwilliger built recovery for the cloud era while everyone else was retrofitting the tape-backup era. Being first to protect AI agents is what that looks like in practice :)
Announcement links in first reply.
Arpio x Amazon announcement: finance.yahoo.com/technology…
Series A announcement: arpio.io/series-a-announceme…
