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The Venture Codex

K9 Ventures

927 Industrial Ave, Palo Alto, CA, 94303-4912, United States

Overview

Funding and support for concept and seed stage startups. K9 Ventures is a true early stage venture fund that provides funding and support for concept-stage and seed-stage technology companies. We work with entrepreneurs, sometimes even before a company has been formed, to help evaluate, evolve and fund a company in its nascent stages. K9 Ventures focuses on startups in the San Francisco Bay Area that have a strong entrepreneur/team, an idea that has a clear path to revenue, which can be capital efficient and where they can add value.

Total investments
43
Lead investments
4
Investments · 12mo
0
Active investors
2

Sector focus

  • Finance
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Agenda Hero

    Participated · Seed · Aug 2025

    Agenda Hero is an AI platform that eliminates manual calendar work by transforming text, images, and PDFs into fully structured calendar events and shareable schedules in seconds. Its core products include Magic Chat, a conversational AI editor for bulk event edits, and Magic Schedules, interactive schedule pages that automatically sync with Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars. The company serves tens of thousands of early adopters, ranging from parents and teachers to small businesses and national organizations. Agenda Hero offers premium plans starting at $30/year while keeping Agenda Hero Magic free for all users. The company plans to use funding to accelerate AI product innovation, expand integrations with calendar platforms, and scale go-to-market adoption globally. Agenda Hero was co-founded in 2020 by CEO Caren Cioffi (a Stanford MBA and former EVP & GM at Brightcove) and is based in San Francisco.

  • Row Zero

    Participated · Seed · May 2025

    Row Zero is an enterprise spreadsheet built for big data and security that runs in the cloud and can open billion-row datasets. It connects directly to data warehouses including Snowflake, Databricks, Redshift, and BigQuery, automatically updates from connected warehouses, and enforces row-level security while allowing administrators to restrict data export. Because it runs in the cloud, Row Zero leverages larger compute and memory to perform analytical operations that would take minutes or hours in Excel and Tableau. Most of its usage comes from Fortune 500 companies seeking to eliminate the security risk of CSV exports from BI tools; Flexport is cited as a customer that shifted weekly reporting from Google Sheets. The company plans to use new funding to expand connector support to ERPs and CRMs, integrate AI into the spreadsheet, and enhance support for Python-based workflows. Row Zero is hiring for roles at its Seattle headquarters and a Pittsburgh satellite office and has raised a total of $13M to date, including the $10M seed announced in May 2025.

  • Gentrace

    Participated · Series A · Dec 2024

    Gentrace is a San Francisco-based developer of a platform for testing and monitoring generative AI applications. Its end-to-end solution includes a purpose-built testing environment that models real-world applications and comprehensive analytics to assess AI model performance. Gentrace recently launched Experiments, which enables cross-functional teams to test AI outputs within the interface, preview outcomes before deployment, anticipate errors, and explore what‑if scenarios. The platform integrates with tools such as OpenAI, Pinecone and Rivet to fit into existing workflows. The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate product development and expand engineering, product, and go-to-market teams to meet enterprise demand for AI development tools. Leadership includes Doug Safreno (CEO), Vivek Nair (CTO) and Daniel Liem (COO).

  • Invisible AI

    Participated · Series A · Sep 2022

    Invisible AI offers a hardware-software platform that uses stereo cameras and edge computers to track workers' body movements, detect potential safety incidents and identify quality issues on assembly lines. The system has depth awareness, can track custom body motions, perform searches for items like product IDs, and a recently deployed app can track forklift movements. All video processing and storage is handled on the edge inside each camera and only leaves the camera when an end-user watches via the web interface; the platform currently cannot perform facial recognition and includes optional real-time face blurring. The product is already deployed in eight facilities, including some owned by Toyota North America, with eight additional deployments planned over the next six months; the company also reports 10 customers across automotive, aerospace and agriculture with dozens of users per deployment. Founded in late 2018 by Eric Danziger and Prateek Sachdeva, Invisible AI has about 20 employees and plans to hire 10 more staffers by the end of the year. The company is pursuing military and government contracts and faces privacy concerns around workplace surveillance, which its leadership says it does not condone. Invisible AI builds self-contained camera-computer units that run highly optimized computer-vision algorithms to track assembly workers' movements and compare them to canonical task examples. The system flags mistakes, missing parts, injuries and other workflow problems while keeping footage and metadata on-premise if desired. The product is code-free and designed for rapid, simple deployment—install the camera, show a few examples, annotate, and be up and running in about an hour. The company emphasizes tools that empower skilled operators, focusing on reducing repetitive stress and streamlining steps rather than punitive monitoring. One of Invisible AI's early partners is Toyota, and the company highlights privacy controls and on-device processing as key features. A $3.6 million seed round was announced to help the company get going.

  • Teleo

    Led · Series A · Jun 2022

    Teleo develops retrofit autonomy—called Teleo Supervised Autonomy—that converts bulldozers, wheel loaders, excavators, terminal tractors and other heavy equipment into remote‑operated and autonomous machines. The platform enables one operator in a central command center to supervise multiple machines simultaneously, locally or thousands of miles away. Teleo is expanding beyond construction into industries such as pulp and paper, logging, port logistics, munition clearing, agriculture, and is targeting airports, waste and recycling, logistics and warehousing. The company announced a global dealer partner network launched in 2023 with partners in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, North Africa and the Middle East. Teleo says it recently received orders for 34 machines from nine new customers across new and existing industries. Since inception in 2019 the company has raised $29.8 million. Teleo offers equipment operations by turning existing construction and mining equipment into semi-autonomous robots using its Teleo Supervised Autonomy technology. The system lets contractors operate heavy equipment without an operator in the cab, enabling a single operator to control multiple machines from a remote desk. Led by CEO Vinay Shet, the company sells through multiple distribution channels, including partnerships with heavy equipment distributors. Teleo announced an official partnership with RDO Equipment Co., a major construction equipment and technology supplier and one of John Deere’s largest dealerships. The company plans to use newly raised capital to scale deployment of its product and to further invest in R&D focused on its Supervised Autonomy technology. The articles do not disclose operating metrics or prior financings beyond this round.

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