Is AI the final invention? M12 Managing Partner Michael Stewart recently joined the MARS Magazine Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on how artificial intelligence is reshaping everything from tech and investing, to the future workforce and beyond. Highlights from the discussion: 1️⃣ Investing in the infrastructure of trust: In cybersecurity investing, technology itself is rarely the centerpiece. The more important piece is how that technology is distributed and integrated into trusted systems. 2️⃣ AI may deliver truths we can’t yet verify: AGI may output truths beyond human comprehension... ideas so advanced that they initially appear as “hallucinations.” Humanity will need new technologies just to test them. 3️⃣ The next AI race: Photonics could solve power consumption, AI’s biggest constraint. As traditional chip scaling (Moore’s Law) hits physical limits, optical systems offer the next leap in networking and computation efficiency. 4️⃣ Raising the next generation for the AI era: Michael's advice to the next generation (including his own kids) is to focus on evergreen human skills like rational thinking, empathy, clear communication, and problem-solving. These are the abilities AI will amplify, not replace. 🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://lnkd.in/eZfT2bKi
M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
San Francisco, California 47,095 followers
We accelerate the future of technology through investments, insights, and meaningful partnership with Microsoft.
About us
M12 is Microsoft’s corporate venture capital fund. We invest across key focus areas in the most promising early-stage companies that are disrupting markets in the business of today and tomorrow.
- Website
-
http://m12.vc
External link for M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund
- Industry
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Type
- Public Company
- Founded
- 2016
- Specialties
- venture capital, VC, investing, technology, corporate venture capital, cloud infrastructure, AI, ML, Business SaaS, communication, productivity, big data, analytics, and security
Locations
-
Primary
Get directions
1355 Market St
San Francisco, California, US
Employees at M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund
-
Tero Collin
-
Todd Graham
Early stage investing in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and developer tools
-
Ann Johnson
Technology Executive. Deputy CISO. Board Member. Corporate Vice President- Microsoft
-
Steve Milner
Sales Director, Strategic Accounts, Global ISV, Software and Digital Platforms
Updates
-
🚀 Funding news: M12 portfolio company Inception has raised $50M to accelerate the next generation of large language models, making them up to 10x faster and more efficient. Today’s LLMs generate text one token at a time, which is a slow, costly process that limits real-time applications. Inception is changing that. By applying diffusion models (the same breakthrough behind image systems like DALL·E and Sora) to language, Inception’s diffusion LLMs (dLLMs) can generate text in parallel, unlocking massive speed and efficiency gains while maintaining top-tier model quality. The impact: - Real-time AI for voice, code, and chat - Lower latency and GPU costs - Enterprise-ready scalability We’re thrilled to back the Inception team as they redefine what’s possible in large-scale AI.
Why wait for answers when you can have them instantly? That’s the question we set out to solve at Inception, where we’re pioneering diffusion large language models (dLLMs)—a breakthrough that ditches one-token-at-a-time generation. Instead, dLLMs generate text in parallel, delivering responses up to 10X faster and more efficiently. Today, we’re proud to share our $50M seed round to scale dLLMs, bringing real-time AI to code, text, and voice applications. Thank you to our backers at Menlo Ventures, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund, Snowflake, Databricks, Mayfield, and Innovation Endeavors for helping make this a reality. dLLMs set a new standard for speed in AI interactions. Russell Brandom has the full story in this TechCrunch feature. https://lnkd.in/gEPeK743
-
Welcome, Alan Du — our newest investor at M12! Alan brings over a decade of experience across venture, operations, and advisory roles in the tech ecosystem. From helping launch Docker’s first office in Asia to investing at the intersection of AI and fintech with PayPal Ventures, he’s built a career around supporting founders who blend bold vision with disciplined execution. Notable investments Alan has led include Cart.com, Deep Instinct, Kite AI, Magic, MineOS, Prime Security, Rasa, SafeBreach, Seal Security, Skipify, Thoropass, and TrueML. We're excited to have Alan on board to partner with early-stage teams reimagining what’s possible, and to help them scale with Microsoft’s global reach and resources. When he’s not meeting founders or spending time with his three kids, you’ll find him exploring history, economics, and sci-fi (ask him about sleeping in a snowcave in Antarctica ❄️). https://lnkd.in/eUve4fyb
-
-
At micro1, we believe the future of AI will be built on human brilliance. Our mission is to connect thousands of world-class experts, from PhD level academic researchers to industry leaders, and transform their knowledge into high-quality human data that fuels model post-training. Excited to be collaborating with Microsoft to advance this mission by embedding expert insights directly into AI training loops and strengthening the quality, safety, and performance of frontier models.
-
-
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
Today, we're opening early access to Allstacks Intelligence Engine—the industry's first AI-native platform that doesn't just show you what happened, but tells you what to do about it. The problem? Engineering organizations waste millions annually trapped in an expensive identify problems → analyze what to do → execute solutions cycle. Leaders hunt through fragmented data across multiple systems while teams manipulate status reports to avoid difficult conversations. By the time you validate hunches through manual investigation, the most impactful risks have already compounded into expensive failures. The solution: Seven years of data architecture innovation culminating in a proprietary semantic data fabric that delivers exhaustive deep research analysis—the kind that would take senior consultants weeks to complete—on demand and automatically. Here's what makes this different: Our semantic data fabric creates a unified intelligence layer that maps every connection across your entire software delivery lifecycle—spanning project management, source control, CI/CD, deployment, and quality tools across 50+ systems. All the pathways are pre-mapped and connected by meaning, so our AI can focus entirely on surfacing the right problems with specific, immediately actionable recommendations. Available in early access: 📊 Deep Research Agents - Delivery Risk, Workflow Analysis, and Requirements Readiness Assessment 💬 AI Assistant - Ask complex questions in natural language, get instant expert-level analysis 📈 Measure adoption and effectiveness of GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Amazon Q across your org This isn't about better dashboards. It's about moving from systems of record to systems of action—from showing what happened to prescribing what to do next. Read the full announcement here 👉 https://hubs.ly/Q03Qd-6V0 Early access is open through the end of 2025: https://lnkd.in/gF9vkeyf
-
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
🌍 We’re excited to share a major milestone for etalytics: our Series A funding has been extended to €16 million, with a new investment from Microsoft’s M12 Venture Fund. This partnership supports our next phase of growth – expanding to the U.S. with a new Bay Area team, scaling our projects across Europe and Asia, and advancing our AI platform etaONE® to make industrial energy systems more efficient, sustainable, and resilient. Our software is already helping organizations like Volkswagen, Digital Realty, Equinix, and Merck cut energy use for cooling and ventilation by up to 50%. With Microsoft’s backing, we’re ready to bring these results to even more data centers and industrial facilities worldwide. A big thank you to M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund (Michael Stewart, Brian Zhao), and to our existing investors Alstin Capital (Carsten Maschmeyer), ebm-papst, and BMH Beteiligungs-Management Hessen for their continued trust in our mission to make energy intelligent. 🔗 Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/eVGchADa #AI #EnergyEfficiency #MicrosoftM12 #DeepTech #Sustainability #DataCenters #ClimateTech
-
-
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