
Illuminate Ventures
6114 La Salle Avenue #323, Oakland, CA, 94611, United States
Overview
Illuminate’s focus is on finding, funding and accelerating great founders in the B2B/Enterprise cloud and mobile computing space. They focus on companies building SaaS applications as well as solutions that leverage data and mobility to improve business results. They seek innovative ideas led by talented teams – frequently bringing together diverse perspectives that marry “creative destruction” with new technologies to solve old problems in new ways. Illuminate is typically a startup’s first institutional investor, but can also be a fit for an established company seeking its first equity financing. Their sweet spot is Series Seed rounds – filling the gap between angel capital and larger funding rounds of traditional VCs. When the timing is right, they collaborate with the best large-scale firms for the next round of financing, but they love lean start-ups that preserve flexibility in their early years. With three funds under management, Illuminate has been an early investor and board member in deep technology platforms like BrightEdge Technologies (SEO market leader), SaaS applications like Xactly Corporation (NYSE: XTLY) and early market innovators like Influitive (customer advocacy).
- Total investments
- 34
- Lead investments
- 8
- Investments · 12mo
- 2
- Active investors
- 2
Sector focus
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Big Data
- Cloud Computing
- Enterprise Software
- Generative AI
- Information Technology
- SaaS
- Software
Investment portfolio
- Karta
Participated · Series A · Jun 2026
Karta offers U.S.-issued Visa credit cards to clients living outside the United States who maintain assets in American banks or brokerages, enabling approval without a Social Security number or ITIN. Approved customers can receive a virtual card immediately and a physical card later, with credit lines of up to $200,000. Most customer interactions—alerts, disputes, and concierge requests—are handled through a 24/7 WhatsApp chat. The card carries premium Visa perks including no foreign exchange fees, reward points, and access to select invite-only events. Karta was founded by Freddy Juez and Orlando Espinoza and is based in Miami. The company partners with roughly 85 private banks and wealth managers, including Itaú, Raymond James, and XP International US.
- Intelo.ai
Led · Equity · Oct 2025
Intelo.ai develops a Collaborative Intelligence platform that deploys specialized AI agents alongside retail merchandising and planning teams. These agents analyze unified data sets to improve demand forecasting, assortment planning, and inventory management, turning manual workflows into automated, insight-driven processes. The company positions its technology as a system of intelligence that augments human expertise, letting merchants focus on strategic decisions while AI handles complex data analysis. With fresh capital, Intelo.ai plans to scale its product and engineering teams and accelerate its go-to-market efforts in the retail sector. Management describes the vision as moving planners and buyers from data analysts to strategic visionaries by offloading the “how” of decision making to AI. To date, the company has raised at least $2 million, though it has not disclosed revenue, customer count, or other operating metrics. The platform targets retailers seeking rapid ROI through smarter, faster, and more profitable merchandising decisions.
- Provarity
Participated · Seed · Dec 2024
Provarity offers an AI-powered presales platform that tracks key presales functions, provides real-time visibility into activities, and delivers actionable insights to optimize sales engineering performance. The solution integrates with popular CRMs and is designed to streamline processes, accelerate sales cycles, and drive revenue growth for B2B presales teams. Led by CEO Chris Cabrera and based in Pleasanton, CA, the company currently serves over 1,000 users. Provarity intends to use the funds to expand its presence in the B2B sales ecosystem, grow its customer base, and enhance customer support. The company also plans to further refine its platform to meet the needs of modern presales teams.
- Contentstack
Participated · Series C · Nov 2022
Contentstack offers a headless CMS geared toward enterprise customers, acting as an automated, composable content repository that separates back-end content management from front-end presentation. Its platform includes workflows for review, approval and publishing, a marketplace for extensions, apps and integrations, and automation capabilities the company says require no code. Contentstack claims to have doubled its customers since last summer and surpassed 50,000 users, and its client roster includes Shell, JPMorgan Chase, HP, McDonald’s and Mattel as well as several public sector agencies. The company has more than 400 employees. Contentstack plans to use new funding for customer acquisition, geographic expansion, new partnerships and product development. It competes with other headless CMS vendors such as Storyblok, Prismic, Strapi and Kontent. Contentstack offers a headless content management system (marketed as a "content experience platform") that enables companies to create personalized customer experiences. The company reports its customer base grew over 150% since its October 2019 Series A, adding customers such as Broadcom, Chico’s FAS, HP, La Perla, Leesa Sleep, McDonald’s and NBC. Recently Contentstack launched a new user interface and says Georgian’s focus on AI and machine learning will help it bring more modern technologies to the platform. The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate technology investments, fuel international growth, and expand its partner ecosystem. CEO Neha Sampat said the strategy is paying off across industries including retail, financial services, gaming and travel. The article emphasizes the product’s appeal to both business and technical users. Contentstack provides a headless CMS platform aimed at enterprise customers. The company targets industries including retail, travel/hospitality, sports/entertainment and tech and counts Shell, Walmart and Cisco among its customers. Founded in 2018 by Neha Sampat, Nishant Patel and Matthew Baier, the founders previously sold Built.io to Software AG. Contentstack reported revenue growth of 4x in the first half of 2019 versus the same period in 2018. It plans to use new funding to scale sales and marketing and build out its partner ecosystem and community. The company intends to expand beyond the U.S., India and Europe into APAC in the first half of 2020, focusing on Australia and New Zealand.
- Jacobi
Participated · Series A · Sep 2022
Jacobi Strategies provides cloud-based technology to support the design and management of multi-asset portfolios, streamlining investment workflows and enabling dynamic client engagement. Led by CEO Tony Mackenzie and founded in 2014, the company serves some of the world’s largest asset managers, including T. Rowe Price, MFS, LGIM and WTW. Its global client base represents assets under management over US$7 trillion. Jacobi has offices in Australia and the United Kingdom in addition to its San Francisco headquarters. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate platform development and expand its team and clientele globally. The product focus is on scaling portfolio design and management for institutional asset managers. Jacobi is a cloud-based technology platform for investment portfolio design and engagement, founded in 2014 by Tony Mackenzie, Tanya Bartolini and Greg Knox. The company serves a global clientele across Australia, North America, Asia and Europe, representing combined assets under management of over A$1.5 trillion. Its customers include multi-asset managers, private client advisers, multi-family offices, consultants, and pension and superannuation funds. Jacobi plans to use the new capital to further develop its platform and to expand into the European market after signing a number of large institutional investment managers. The funding announcement coincided with the launch of Jacobi’s office in London, building on existing locations in Brisbane and San Francisco. The platform emphasizes portfolio design and engagement for large institutional and advisory clients.