San Francisco-based Base10 Partners has raised two funds totaling $850 million: a seed and Series A fund 4, and a Series B fund 2 to invest in automation for the real economy.
Crunchbase News spoke with co-founder Adeyemi Ajao, who describes the firm’s thesis as using technology to bring capabilities traditionally available to the top 1% to the other 99%.
Portfolio companies that fit that thesis include LatAm neobank Nubank; fleet safety management startup Motive; WeTravel, which is a tool for travel agents; Happy Robot, which develops agents for enterprises; and coffee chain Blank Street.
The firm has a strong focus on logistics, payroll, construction and other real economy sectors.
It is also exploring vision models and world models — the equivalent of LLMs for visual understanding. If AI could truly understand every pixel and atom in a construction site, that will unlock robotics, Ajao said.
Manufacturing intelligence is another area of interest.
Ajao asks: Can AI understand manufacturing processes the way LLMs understand text, whether it’s perfumes, pharmaceuticals, chips or concrete, for real economy applications?
Stage focus
The firm invests at seed through Series B. From the early-stage fund, Base10 plans each year to make 10 to 15 seed investments, and two to three at Series A. The Series B fund, roughly equal in size, will make three to four investments each year.
Base10 is research first, spending months analyzing sectors before investing.
“We might ask what IT support firms look like when you have AI, or what the software stack of the modern restaurant is,” said Ajao. The firm tries to meet every company globally operating in that space. It spends roughly 50% of its time with companies that are not fundraising, with 90% of investments made due to its research.
For the recent Y Combinator batch of 160 companies, the firm only meets with those that align with their research. Along with too much happening, founders are better prepared. For the firm, being informed allows them to get to conviction fast.
Base10 has created an internal AI system called Base11 to classify companies, and automate research. However, “the actual decision-making and winning is more human than ever,” said Ajao.
That means spending more time understanding founders as people and talking to customers, said Ajao.
Competition among venture firms is also higher than ever. “It forces all of us to articulate a lot more why someone should partner with us,” he said.
Through its Advancement Initiative, Base10 donates up to 50% of carried interest to underfunded colleges and universities to support financial aid.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
