Essence VC

Essence Venture Capital is a venture capital investment firm established in 2019 and based in Seattle, Washington. The firm focuses on supporting technical founders as they develop their startups, guiding them through the early stages of their business journeys. Essence Venture Capital invests in a variety of sectors, including information technology, big data, data infrastructure, development tools, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Its investment strategy spans multiple regions, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa, reflecting a commitment to fostering innovation across diverse markets.

Timothy Chen

General Partner

36 past transactions

Gable

Series A in 2025
Gable is a B2B data infrastructure SaaS that offers a platform for collaboration to write and execute data contracts. Gable supports communication between data providers and consumers using data contracts, assisting companies to increase data quality at scale.

OpenInfer

Seed Round in 2025
OpenInfer develops an AI inference engine for edge applications

Nuon

Series A in 2024
Nuon is a developer of cloud applications that enables businesses to operate their software on customers' cloud accounts. The company focuses on creating fully self-managing cloud environments by handling the deployment, updates, and ongoing management of operations. This approach provides businesses with a control plane that allows application builders to debug applications, access logs, monitor metrics, and receive alerts. Additionally, Nuon's platform facilitates the execution of operational commands in a secure and auditable manner, ensuring the integrity of customer data from a centralized dashboard.

Fiddler AI

Series B in 2024
Fiddler Labs, Inc. is a company that specializes in developing an artificial intelligence platform designed to help businesses analyze, manage, and deploy their machine learning models effectively. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Fiddler offers an Explainable AI Engine that promotes transparency and understanding in AI solutions. This platform allows users across data science, product, and business teams to comprehend, validate, and manage their AI implementations, ensuring that these systems deliver reliable and trustworthy experiences for end-users. By providing statistical metrics, performance monitoring, and centralized controls, Fiddler aims to make AI more accessible and trustworthy for enterprises, ultimately unlocking the complexities of AI and enhancing user confidence in its applications.

Genmo

Series A in 2024
Genmo is an artificial intelligence creative content generation platform that specializes in developing creative products.

Distributional

Series A in 2024
Distributional is a developer of an AI testing and evaluation platform focused on ensuring that artificial intelligence systems are safe, reliable, and secure. The company offers tools for continuous monitoring, which include generating test cases and analyzing results. These tools help organizations ensure that their AI systems perform as expected, thereby fostering trust in AI technologies. By providing these capabilities, Distributional enables customers to deploy AI products more frequently and effectively, allowing them to fully leverage the potential benefits of AI within their operations.

Letta

Seed Round in 2024
Letta specializes in memory management technology, enabling AI models to remember users and conversations. Its featured products include Hosted Cloud and Lett_API. Hosted Cloud creates, deploys, and manages agents at scale with Letta Cloud. Also, its Lett_ API adds memory to LLM services to give them reasoning capabilities and transparent long-term memory powered by MemGPT.

LanceDB

Seed Round in 2024
LanceDB is a developer-friendly, open source database for AI. From hyper scalable vector search to advanced retrieval for RAG, from streaming training data to interactive exploration of large scale AI datasets, LanceDB is the best foundation for your AI application.

Teleskope

Seed Round in 2024
Teleskope offers a data classification and redaction service that helps organizations manage sensitive and personal information across various data sources. Its platform effectively identifies and classifies both structured and unstructured data, enabling businesses to understand their data security and privacy posture. By pinpointing personal and sensitive data elements, Teleskope assists organizations in complying with regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. The platform also allows for the customization of detection rules and provides a real-time catalog that continuously monitors and tracks the organization's data assets, ensuring that critical information is not stored or leaked improperly.

Log10

Seed Round in 2024
Self-improving LLM Applications: AI that optimizes LLM applications by tuning prompts and models

Coana

Pre Seed Round in 2024
Coana helps software teams tackle the flood of alerts from traditional SCA tools. By using advanced reachability analysis, Coana cuts false alerts by over 80%, freeing up significant engineering time without sacrificing security. Coana is developed by leading program analysis researchers and is backed by Sequoia Capital and Essence VC.

Unkey

Pre Seed Round in 2023
Unkey is an open-source API authentication and authorization platform focused on user-facing APIs. It provides developers with tools to create, verify, and manage API keys efficiently and with low latency. The platform encompasses the entire API lifecycle, offering services such as API development, gateway management, monitoring, and analytics. Unkey aims to enhance the security, management, and scalability of APIs, thereby enabling organizations to improve their operational efficiency and foster innovation. Additionally, the company offers an Elixir SDK to demonstrate its functionalities, positioning itself as a vital resource for the next generation of developers in the realm of API authentication.

Vera

Pre Seed Round in 2023
Vera develops an assessment platform to identify and address risks in artificial intelligence and machine learning models. It engages key stakeholders across teams to create data-driven assessments and use data science tools to investigate AI and ML models, helping organizations navigate through uncertainty and protecting companies and individuals from risky artificial intelligence systems.

Yurts

Series A in 2023
Yurts is an enterprise-focused platform that leverages generative artificial intelligence to enhance knowledge management and streamline business processes. By integrating advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) and sophisticated AI applications, Yurts enables organizations to deploy secure AI-driven language solutions while mitigating complexities and addressing privacy and security challenges. The platform empowers individuals and businesses to optimize their workflows and connect with their best work, revolutionizing how enterprises utilize generative models in a secure and reliable manner.

Gable

Seed Round in 2023
Gable is a B2B data infrastructure SaaS that offers a platform for collaboration to write and execute data contracts. Gable supports communication between data providers and consumers using data contracts, assisting companies to increase data quality at scale.

Superframe

Seed Round in 2023
Superframe is an artificial intelligence-powered software company to assists organizations optimize go-to-market technology stacks. It accelerates revenue operations teams and support by removing the time, expense, and risk.

Abbey Labs

Seed Round in 2023
Abbey is a platform for security teams to automate and secure access to sensitive data. With Abbey, you can improve your security and compliance programs by automatically controlling and right-sizing permissions so the risks around unauthorized access is limited in the event of a breach.

Augmend

Pre Seed Round in 2023
Augmend is a developer of an artificial intelligence-augmented platform that facilitates knowledge transfer among software developers. The platform captures and shares expertise, enhancing collective intelligence within development teams. It offers features such as a multiplayer workspace, contextual memory, and AI assistance, which support clients in managing incidents effectively. Through its innovative tools, Augmend aims to improve collaboration and streamline workflows in the software development process, ultimately contributing to more efficient project outcomes. The company was acquired by Datadog, further expanding its reach and capabilities in the technology sector.

Groundlight

Seed Round in 2023
Groundlight is a technology company that simplifies the implementation of computer vision and machine learning for developers. By providing straightforward English language instructions and a minimal amount of code, Groundlight enables users to programmatically interpret photos. The company's innovative escalation technology enhances the accuracy of results by forwarding low-confidence outcomes to more advanced machine learning systems and human experts. This approach eliminates the need for extensive data gathering and training, allowing users to quickly develop functional models within minutes. Groundlight's solutions aim to improve the way machines understand and interact with the visual world.

Orb

Series A in 2023
Orb is a developer of real-time billing infrastructure tailored for artificial intelligence and software companies. The company provides a platform that manages the data infrastructure and billing logic necessary for implementing usage-based pricing models. By doing so, Orb enables businesses to adopt more flexible monetization strategies, allowing them to better align their revenue workflows with evolving market demands. This innovative approach supports the next wave of technology companies in streamlining their billing processes and enhancing their pricing structures.

Sentio

Seed Round in 2023
Sentio operates an observability platform designed to enhance monitoring and log management for decentralized applications (DApps) in the Web3 ecosystem. The platform offers a range of services, including variable-level smart contract monitoring, full-text and conditional event transaction search, and user-friendly dashboards and alerts. These tools allow users to track essential variable states within smart contracts and obtain real-time insights, thereby facilitating the efficient development and deployment of decentralized applications. By providing effective infrastructure and developer tools, Sentio aims to accelerate the adoption of DApps within the crypto community.

Sec3

Seed Round in 2023
Sec3 is a prominent provider of blockchain security solutions and smart contract auditing services, founded by a team of Ph.Ds, university professors, and expert CTF competitors. The company specializes in developing software that continuously monitors blockchain transactions and employs advanced technology and algorithms to analyze source code. Sec3 offers comprehensive security audits for smart contracts and Web2 applications, aiming to significantly reduce security risks and expedite time to market. In addition to its auditing services, Sec3 has developed a static analyzer platform that identifies race conditions in Java code, which helps clients detect critical concurrency bugs in large and complex software systems. By leveraging the latest artificial intelligence technologies, Sec3 provides robust security solutions throughout the entire life cycle of decentralized applications (dApps).

Common Fate

Seed Round in 2022
Common Fate is a cloud security and access management company founded in June 2022 by Christopher Norman and Fraser Ricupero in Perth, Western Australia. The company specializes in developing a permission management framework that simplifies and secures cloud identities. Its platform focuses on identity-first security, automating least privilege access controls and permission management workflows across various cloud environments. By providing secure-by-default workflows and lockdown features, Common Fate enables organizations to protect privileged assets and sensitive data while facilitating efficient operations for high-velocity DevOps teams.

Nuon

Seed Round in 2022
Nuon is a developer of cloud applications that enables businesses to operate their software on customers' cloud accounts. The company focuses on creating fully self-managing cloud environments by handling the deployment, updates, and ongoing management of operations. This approach provides businesses with a control plane that allows application builders to debug applications, access logs, monitor metrics, and receive alerts. Additionally, Nuon's platform facilitates the execution of operational commands in a secure and auditable manner, ensuring the integrity of customer data from a centralized dashboard.

Immerok

Seed Round in 2022
Immerok is a company established in 2022 that specializes in providing a fully managed cloud service for real-time stream processing applications, focusing on Apache Flink. The organization aims to enhance the experience of building, running, and supporting Apache Flink in the cloud, enabling developers to drive innovation within their companies. With a distributed team of experts in Apache Flink and support from prominent investors and IT industry leaders, Immerok empowers developers to perform real-time decision-making and automation at any scale.

Turso

Seed Round in 2022
Turso is an open-source Edge database founded in 2021 that focuses on enhancing the developer experience for frontend developers. It provides a serverless database solution that is affordable, fast, and user-friendly. Turso allows users to create up to 500 databases replicated in three locations at no cost, enabling flexibility in data management. This capability empowers developers to efficiently bring data closer to their end users by replicating data to various servers or devices, thus facilitating improved performance and accessibility.

HumanSignal

Seed Round in 2022
HumanSignal is a developer of software focused on data labeling and annotation tools essential for creating accurate artificial intelligence products. The company offers a platform that integrates automation with human oversight to enhance AI model training, prepare datasets, and validate models. By facilitating collaborative data labeling, quality assurance, and analytics, HumanSignal enables businesses to efficiently annotate their datasets. Additionally, it is known for creating and maintaining Label Studio, a popular open-source data labeling tool. Based in San Francisco, California, HumanSignal's solutions aim to streamline the process of managing training data, thereby supporting organizations in developing competitive machine learning and AI models at scale.

Graft

Pre Seed Round in 2022
Graft is a modern AI platform that allows data teams to create production-ready AI solutions with minimal effort. It eliminates the need for machine learning expertise, additional staffing, or infrastructure maintenance. The platform focuses on a data-centric approach, utilizing foundation models to enhance business outcomes. Additionally, Graft specializes in unstructured data analysis, harnessing artificial intelligence to process various types of data, including text, images, video, audio, and graphs. This capability enables clients to apply advanced analytical techniques effectively, ultimately driving improved results for their businesses.

SeeMetrics

Seed Round in 2022
SeeMetrics is a cybersecurity performance management platform that enables security leaders to effectively measure, track, and enhance their operations. The platform integrates security data, metrics, and business objectives into a user-friendly interface, connecting with the entire security stack to extract relevant information. By delivering meaningful metrics, SeeMetrics empowers security leaders to proactively manage their operations, assess their capabilities, and monitor progress. Additionally, the platform facilitates collaboration between security leaders and non-security stakeholders, allowing for informed, data-driven decision-making.

You.com

Seed Round in 2021
You.com is an innovative AI-powered search engine founded by leading AI researchers. It utilizes a Large Language Model to generate personalized, human-like responses to user queries. The platform features various AI tools, including YouChat, YouCode, YouWrite, and YouImagine, which assist users in web searches, content creation, image generation, and code development. Emphasizing data privacy, You.com delivers real-time results and concise summaries while filtering out irrelevant information, fake reviews, and advertisements. This focus on efficiency enables users to access accurate information quickly, enhancing productivity and streamlining complex research tasks.

Continual

Seed Round in 2021
Continual is a developer of an operational artificial intelligence platform designed to enhance predictions related to customer churn and inventory forecasts. The platform connects seamlessly to existing cloud data warehouses, allowing users to leverage their data effectively. By utilizing machine learning technology, Continual operationalizes predictive models, minimizes data leakage, and offers essential operational tools. This enables clients to better manage and utilize their data, ultimately driving revenue, streamlining operations, and fostering innovative products and services without requiring complex engineering solutions.

Elotl

Seed Round in 2021
Elotl operates a serverless infrastructure platform specifically designed for microservice applications. The company provides a nodeless Kubernetes engine that allows businesses to run their applications in a cost-effective, secure, and straightforward manner on public cloud environments. By utilizing Elotl's platform, clients can achieve cost savings, enhance multi-tenant security, and streamline operational processes.

Devron

Venture Round in 2020
Devron is a data science platform developer founded in 2020 by Kartik Chopra in North Brunswick, New Jersey. The company aims to democratize access to machine learning across distributed data silos while preserving privacy. Its platform utilizes federated machine learning and privacy technologies, enabling users to extract insights from data without the need for centralized data storage. This approach eliminates the costs, time, and risks associated with data duplication, allowing clients to achieve faster results and improve the generalizability of their models while maintaining the confidentiality of data sources and methodologies.

Datafold

Seed Round in 2020
Datafold Inc., founded in 2020 and based in San Francisco, California, specializes in solutions for quality assurance and monitoring of analytical data. The company provides tools that automate data quality management, helping organizations extract greater value from their analytical datasets. Key offerings include the ability to compare tables, validate ETL code changes, and automate data quality assurance processes. By simplifying data quality monitoring and enabling instant table comparison and profiling, Datafold enhances data engineering workflows, allowing businesses to maintain high standards of data integrity and reliability.

LaunchNotes

Seed Round in 2020
LaunchNotes is a software company that specializes in product change communication, aiming to enhance customer experiences by keeping teams and users informed about upcoming product changes. Its platform centralizes release communications, providing a single source of truth that is accessible to all stakeholders. By delivering timely updates tailored to specific teams, workstreams, or organizational structures, LaunchNotes helps organizations synchronize with their development teams, ensuring that no one is caught off guard by product updates. This automated and secure approach allows businesses to maintain transparency and improve collaboration throughout the product development lifecycle.
Spot something off? Help us improve by flagging any incorrect or outdated information. Just email us at support@teaserclub.com. Your feedback is most welcome.