Alchemist Accelerator
156 2nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94105, United States
Overview
Alchemist is a venture-backed accelerator focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (not consumers). CB Insights rated Alchemist the top accelerator in 2016 based on the median funding rates of its grads (YC was #2). The accelerator’s primary screening criteria is on teams, prioritizing having distinctive technical co-founders. The organization provides seed investment into companies it admits (typically $36K), and provides founders a structured path to traction, fundraising, mentorship, and community throughout a 6-month program. The company's backers include many of the top corporate and VC funds in the Valley -- including Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, GE, next47(Siemens), and Salesforce, among others—the accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures/year. Notable alumni include LaunchDarkly, Rigetti Quantum Computing, mPharma, Matternet, and Mightyhive.
- Total investments
- 27
- Lead investments
- 1
- Investments · 12mo
- 2
- Active investors
- 10
Sector focus
- Business Development
- Finance
- Financial Services
Investment portfolio
- Turbo Law
Participated · Seed · Jul 2026
Turbo Law offers an AI-native Case Intelligence platform that ingests complete matter files and builds a Fact Graph linking parties, experts, admissions, dates, and source citations to produce chronologies, motions, discovery responses, case evaluations, and status reports. The product is organized across five pillars: review, drafting, research, strategy & settlement, and an always-on assistant. Turbo Law is live at firms across medical malpractice, mass tort, toxic tort, transportation, M&A and adjacent complex-litigation verticals and reports more than 1,800 active matters on the platform. Customer-reported metrics include a 60% reduction in non-billable hours per matter and 10% fewer write-offs, alongside reported profitability on alternative fee arrangements. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, CA and plans to use the new funding to deepen vertical coverage, expand engineering and go-to-market teams, and strengthen security and compliance.
- Loadex
Participated · Seed · Nov 2025
Loadex offers a Chrome extension and accompanying dashboards that automate load booking, document checks, analytics, driver management and other repetitive dispatcher workflows. The platform is already deployed at 12 U.S. trucking companies, serving roughly 650 dispatchers who manage more than 4,000 trucks. Built by a founding team with Google and trucking-software experience, the company grew from an MVP spreadsheet and Telegram bot to a fully-featured SaaS product in just a month, iterating continuously with dispatcher feedback. Revenue figures were not disclosed, but the product is used daily and is reportedly recommended organically among dispatchers. Loadex has expanded its team to 13 employees and is scaling U.S. sales while developing an AI module that will fully automate broker negotiations. Having recently closed a pre-seed round, the company is focused on increasing revenue and preparing for a forthcoming Seed raise.
- 36ZERO Vision
Participated · Series A · Jul 2025
36ZERO Vision builds an AI-powered, software-first visual inspection operating system that runs on low-end hardware (e.g., iPhones, NVIDIA Jetson, low-spec GPUs) and supports industry protocols such as GenICam. Its multi-stage foundation model is highly data-efficient, able to learn from as few as five annotated images and to simulate hundreds of thousands of synthetic variants, delivering reduced false positives versus incumbents. The platform is cloud-enabled and self-serve, allowing customers to label, train and validate models without onsite hardware installation. The technology is already deployed in production at demanding manufacturers including Siemens, Bosch Rexroth and LEONI, with near-zero churn reported and examples of full automation delivering ROI in 4–5 months. With this funding the company plans to scale across Europe, expand its team in sales, customer success and product development, and add features. Longer-term roadmap includes moving into semiconductor (wafer and chip) inspection in roughly two to three years.
- Universal Fuel Technologies
Participated · Seed · Oct 2024
Universal Fuel Technologies (Unifuel) develops Flexiforming, a chemical process that converts ethanol, methanol, renewable naphtha, LPG and other renewable feedstocks into high-quality, drop-in sustainable aviation fuel. Flexiforming is designed to produce 100% synthetic SAF without blending and to create the aromatic molecules required for aircraft engines. The company says the process can cut SAF production costs by up to 50% and reduce related carbon emissions by up to 75%, and it can upgrade low-value byproducts (naphtha and LPG) from HEFA and other processes into high-value SAF. Unifuel has over a decade of research and more than 5,000 hours of testing on the technology. With the recent financing, the company plans to establish lab space in Texas for SAF sample production and to pursue entry into the ASTM clearinghouse for SAF certification. The company positions Flexiforming as complementary to existing SAF pathways and aims to improve monetization and feedstock flexibility for SAF producers.
- Pitchit.ai
Participated · Seed · Aug 2024
Pitchit.ai is presented as an early-stage startup whose founder announced a $3 million seed raise. Public commentary from the founder focused on lessons learned during the fundraising process and on deploying the raised VC capital. The founder credited a mentor for teaching key steps that were repeated to achieve the raise. The available information does not detail the company’s product, customers, revenue, founding year, or location. No operating metrics or financial performance figures were disclosed in the article.