Act One Ventures is an AI-native venture firm in San Francisco, investing at pre-seed and seed.
This is not an inflection. It is an inversion.
Intelligence is becoming a commodity. What remains scarce is the conviction to rebuild, not optimize.
Powering Agents
The rails agents run on. Memory, identity, tools, and orchestration for machines that act, not just answer.
AI-Native Operating Systems & Services
Companies re-architecting how industries operate. Some arm incumbents to rebuild their operations. Others deliver the service itself, ten times better, because of AI.
The Newly-Imagined
Markets that did not exist before AI. Ambiguous today, obvious at scale.
01
System-level insight
You see how the whole machine works — not just the feature, but the market structure it will rearrange.
02
Non-linear execution
You find the path nobody planned for — progress that compounds instead of accumulating.
03
Extremes, not the middle
The best companies are led from the poles, not the middle, by founders with rare attributes. The Anomalies.
AG2
PERSONAL AI ASSISTANT
Qingyun Wu co-authored AutoGen, the paper that defined open-source agent frameworks. Her CTO co-created it, then left Google DeepMind to build with her.
THE PROOF
50,000+ GitHub stars and 10M+ downloads earned in open source. Now they’re building Sutando, a personal AI that works unattended.
INVESTED 2026
Jelou
POWERING AGENTS
Luis Loaiza is building the agent layer for commerce on WhatsApp, where the customers already are.
THE PROOF
Agents in production for one of the world’s largest brewers and major enterprise banks. Series A led by Wellington, 2025.
INVESTED 2022
Gail
AI-NATIVE OS + SERVICES
Matthew and Michael Vega-Sanz scaled insurtech LULA, saw the call-center problem from the inside, and rebuilt it as voice AI.
THE PROOF
Compliant conversations at institutional scale, live with large enterprise insurers and banks.
INVESTED 2025
We didn’t buy AI. We built it.
Act One runs on an agent fleet built in-house and trained on our history of sourcing, decisions, and judgment. It makes us sharper before we invest and more useful to founders after. It’s how Act One shows up prepared, everywhere.
First checks at pre-seed and seed. Conviction, not consensus.
Stage
Pre-seed & seed
Average check
$1M
Geography
Rooted in San Francisco. Open to anywhere.
Years in operation
Companies backed
Exits
