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The Venture Codex

Draper Associates

55 E 3rd Ave, San Mateo, CA, 94401, United States

Overview

Draper Associates is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in industry-transforming companies. They invest globally, in great teams of people creating revolutionary companies in new media, gaming, SaaS, cloud, new finance, IOT, and mobile. Their portfolio companies disrupting markets in the tens of billions and are on a clear path to later rounds of fundraising. Draper Associates encourages entrepreneurs to drive their businesses to greatness, to transform industries with new technologies, and to build platforms for extraordinary growth, jobs, and wealth creation. It was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Mateo, CA, USA.

Total investments
226
Lead investments
70
Investments · 12mo
33
Active investors
9

Sector focus

  • Financial Services
  • FinTech
  • Software
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Aurelius Systems

    Led · Series A · Aug 2026

    Aurelius Systems develops AI-powered sensing and robotic directed-energy platforms, with its flagship product called Archimedes. The company positions its systems to autonomously acquire, detect, track, and neutralize aerial threats at scale and with speed and economics suited to modern operations. Recent validations and partnerships include integration with American Rheinmetall, C2 interoperability demonstrated at Operation Jailbreak, and platform validation at T-REX 26-2. Aurelius is investing in manufacturing, production readiness, and vertical integration to reduce supply chain risk and improve component availability. The company raised $40 million in a Series A to accelerate technical development, scale production, broaden offerings, and expand into new markets. Aurelius is based in San Francisco and currently has 19 employees, with plans to grow to more than 40 by the end of 2026.

  • Edvisor.ai

    Led · Seed · Jul 2026

    Edvisor develops an AI-native platform for higher education instructors that replaces static textbooks with interactive, AI-powered content offering personalized feedback and Socratic-style coaching. The company positions its product to help instructors rethink teaching for an AI-native world and to increase AI resilience, affordability, and accessibility in classrooms. Founded by Rameez Mahmood and Shariq Shah and headquartered in California, Edvisor is building a teaching and learning ecosystem aimed at institutional adoption. Following its $1.3M pre-seed raise led by Draper Associates, the company plans to scale its product development and expand its institutional reach. No revenue, user, or other operating metrics were disclosed in the reporting.

  • Klinic

    Participated · Series A · Jul 2026

    Founded in 2021 and based in Texas, Klinic provides a unified digital infrastructure for independent specialty providers, initially focused on behavioral health and now expanded into oncology, cardiology and rare diseases. Its platform aggregates tools for patient acquisition, intake, electronic health records, customer relationship management, care coordination and revenue-cycle support. Klinic also runs services that connect specialty pharmaceutical manufacturers with providers and patients to support access to complex therapies. The company positions itself as a healthcare equivalent of Shopify for specialists, aiming to reduce administrative burdens such as prior authorizations and workflow management. Klinic plans to use newly raised capital to expand the platform across multiple specialties, while facing the challenge of scaling and competing with established EHR vendors and healthcare software companies.

  • Venus Aerospace

    Participated · Series B · Jul 2026

    Venus Aerospace develops rotating detonation rocket engines (RDRE) and has shifted focus toward hypersonic weapons and high-speed space vehicles after a successful flight demonstration in 2025. The company was founded in 2020 by CEO Sassie Duggleby and CTO Andrew Duggleby. Its propulsion architecture emphasizes efficiency, throttling, reusability, and manufacturability aimed at defense and space customers. Venus has conducted about 600 engine tests with a longest-duration burn of 32 seconds to date, while customers require burns of roughly 6 to 15 minutes for operational missions. This year it received a grant from the Texas Space Commission to build a larger test stand to enable longer-duration testing. The company is using new equity from its $90M Series B to fund vehicle-specific testing and development with potential customers.

  • Alsa

    Participated · Seed · Jul 2026

    AIsa provides a unified transaction layer that combines a resource gateway and an agentic payment layer to let AI agents discover, access, meter and pay for digital resources with usage-based billing and settlement in fiat or stablecoins. The platform aggregates resources such as AI models, APIs, real-time data, search services, SaaS tools, compute and agent services and enforces spending controls and audit trails for enterprises. After launching in 2025, AIsa reported rapid traction: from February to June 2026 registered agent users grew 150x, aggregate API calls and transactions processed grew 200x, and the company onboarded more than 50,000 registered agents without paid marketing. Customers such as Impossible Finance use the platform to access multiple models, data and APIs through a single programmable interface. AIsa integrates with agent frameworks like OpenClaw and Hermes and with emerging agent-payment initiatives from Circle, Visa and Stripe. The company has raised $6.5M to date and plans to invest in engineering, payments infrastructure, marketplace expansion and enterprise product features to scale agent transactions at internet scale.

Team