M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund

Our portfolio company Allstacks exemplifies a core M12 thesis: the next great enterprise solutions will be AI-native, not just AI-enabled. Kudos to the Allstacks team on the launch of their Intelligence Engine, which disrupts the traditional "investigate-analyze-execute" cycle in engineering by analyzing development activity on demand and surfacing the right problems with specific, immediately actionable recommendations. The secret ingredient? A proprietary semantic data fabric that delivers exhaustive deep research analysis. Learn more about the innovation behind Allstacks' Deep Research Agent approach: https://lnkd.in/e5wJc4tB

Cybersecurity is finally getting its AI moment. This month’s M12 Founders Feature spotlights Guy Flechter, co-founder and CEO of Sola Security — a company on a mission to reinvent how teams build and manage security. Guy started Sola out of frustration. While design, payments, and productivity tools became simpler and smarter, cybersecurity stayed buried under complexity. Sola changes that. Their AI-driven platform lets users create custom security solutions in minutes. Fast, intuitive, and built for the way we work today. In our conversation, Guy talks about: 💬 Why AI in security isn’t hype — it’s the new normal ⚡ The mindset that helps Sola move faster than the competition 💡 What he looks for in great teammates (hint: curiosity and zero ego) 🤝 Why partners like M12 matter when you’re challenging the status quo Read the full interview for Guy's take on conviction, speed, and breaking old systems that no longer serve us: https://lnkd.in/ewkCgKfe

Thank you to the founders who joined us in Redmond this week and shared bold visions for the next generation of AI infrastructure: Patrick Bowen (Neurophos), Bodil Holst & Adrià Salvador Palau (Lace Lithography, M12 portfolio), Ashish Vengsarkar (nEye.ai, M12 portfolio), and Chris Lattner & Tim Davis (Modular). What we’re seeing in the AI Systems market: power and compute constraints are pushing the industry to deliver dramatically better Tokens per joule. The next wave will come from step-function gains across compute, networking, and operations ... think optical compute and switching, atom-scale patterning that breaks die-size limits, and heterogeneous software stacks that unlock performance across NVIDIA+AMD, and beyond. (Check out Michael Stewart's latest blog for more insights on where this space is headed: https://lnkd.in/dt-qipj8) At M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, we’re tracking hard KPIs like PPAC, FLOPS/W, and pJ/bit, and the teams moving those curves in the right direction. Thank you again to everyone who joined!

Energy intelligence means optimizing how we power AI’s growth — and turning that efficiency into measurable sustainability impact. Congratulations to our portfolio company etalytics on raising €16M to make that vision real. ⚡🌎 We’re excited to support etalytics as they expand internationally and bring next-generation energy intelligence to data centers, manufacturing, and beyond. This partnership reflects our belief in the power of AI and systems infrastructure to solve complex, real-world problems. https://lnkd.in/eVY23cau

What happens when you bring the M12 team together in Redmond?
 Big ideas, bigger conversations…and one very competitive ping pong tournament. 🏓 Last week, the M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund team came together for our annual offsite: a few packed days of connecting, learning, and looking ahead at what’s next for founders, AI, and the startup ecosystem. We capped it off with a full day of workshops and sessions alongside the Microsoft Business Development team — where our investors shared the startup trends they’re tracking and how we’re thinking about the future of innovation. Some favorite moments:
 💡 Building agents with David Moore
 🐾 Volunteering with Page Ahead Children's Literacy Program and Seattle Humane
– in the spirit of our annual #MicrosoftGive month 🔍 A deep-dive session with Anna Roth from Microsoft’s Office of the CTO
 🚀 Founders panel featuring Alex Zenla (Edera), Pradeep N (Armada), David Tepper (Pay-i), and Kirat Pandya (Osmos) 🏆 And yes — we finally settled the "friendly" competition between our SF and Redmond teams.
Congrats to Jose Clautier, our 2025 M12 Ping Pong Champion! Massive thanks to Stella Romero, Anthony Sims, Holly Attolini, and Grace Canby for making the week seamless. The conversations and energy from this offsite remind us why we do what we do — investing in the builders shaping what comes next.

Spotted in Observer: M12 Managing Partner Michael Stewart on how AI is reshaping the venture landscape 👀 A few standout themes from Michael’s perspective that capture how we’re thinking about the future of AI investing at M12: ➡️ AI as a force multiplier in deal sourcing — While founder meetings and networks remain core, we’re increasingly layering AI tools to analyze leads (unit economics, pricing models, technology stacks). ➡️ Real traction vs. pilots — In an AI-saturated environment, proof of recurring revenue (beyond experiments) is a meaningful differentiator. ➡️ Infrastructure matters — The next frontier hinges on the chips, memory, networking, and endpoints required to scale AI globally. ➡️ Patience in a hyper-accelerated market — With funding rounds ballooning early, it’s tempting to sprint. We believe the best outcomes come when we let our bets mature deliberately. The M12 team is committed to building the future responsibly; embracing AI as both a lens and a lever, while staying grounded in founder grit, sound economics, and lasting product-market fit. Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/gHWM3AwA

We had a fantastic evening connecting with founders, investors, and friends at yesterday’s Startup & VC Happy Hour in Seattle ☕🍸 It’s always energizing to see familiar faces and meet new ones across the Pacific Northwest venture ecosystem — all against a perfect fall backdrop at Mbar Rooftop Bar. A huge thank you to our co-hosts at J.P. Morgan Innovation Economy Banking and to everyone who joined us for great conversation and connection, including Yoko Okano, Jennifer Savage, Mike Miller, Carly Kiser, Zane Khatib, Sophia Lu, Kevin Crosby and Rasik Parikh. We’re proud to be part of such a vibrant community of builders and investors driving innovation in the Pacific Northwest — and we look forward to more moments like this soon. 🌲

As AI workloads scale, so must the infrastructure that powers them. The launch of SquadRack™ by M12 portfolio company d-Matrix marks a key step in making inference more efficient and scalable across data centers, offering a glimpse of what next-generation AI infrastructure looks like. It’s a powerful example of how collaboration and innovation are driving the next era of compute. https://lnkd.in/e5vDxw5A

At our recent Accelerate Together event in Mountain View, founders, investors, and technology leaders came together to explore the next wave of AI innovation with partners including Cognition, Replit, LlamaIndex, and Icertis. Through Microsoft for Startups and M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, Microsoft is helping early-stage founders scale faster and tackle real-world challenges with AI, serving as a trusted bridge between high-potential startups and global enterprise customers. This is how we accelerate innovation together. 💡🤝 Read more: https://lnkd.in/esP2VkZt

🎉 We're proud to announce that PAXAFE has earned the Microsoft Healthcare AI Certified Software designation. This certification validates our technology against rigorous standards for ethical AI, data privacy, and responsible innovation in healthcare. As a Microsoft partner built on Azure and backed by M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, this certification reinforces our commitment to delivering secure, trusted and sound AI to the cold chain cargo owners & logistics services providers we serve. Ilya Preston, Ashok Seetharam, Brian Shultz, Chandler Williams, Ivan Castro, Sally Ann Frank #decisionintelligence #ai #llm #coldchain #digitaltransformation