Celebrating the top Seed stage investors in 2025 who made early bets on the startups driving today’s AI revolution.
The Midas Seed List is back for its fourth year, spotlighting the early-stage investors who helped fund household startup names from their infancy. This year’s standouts reflect a market pivoting from consumer and enterprise wins to longer-term AI plays. From AI-native cybersecurity platforms like Wiz and Cyera to climate-forward biotech companies like Solugen and code-generation startups such as Anysphere (Cursor), these VCs are embracing complexity. Fintech and SaaS are still delivering results globally too, with consistent winners like Ramp, Deel, and Ironclad appearing across multiple top portfolios.
The 25 investors on the 2025 Midas Seed List are shaping the landscape for the rest of the venture ecosystem. Whether it’s AI and its supporting infrastructure, cybersecurity, or industrial biotech, these investors are backing founders who are building the future from the ground up. Below, we highlight five of the trendsetters, whose early bets on AI and other foundational technologies helped secure their place on the Midas Seed List and defined this year’s tech and venture capital landscape.
AI Trendsetters | Midas Seed List 2025
Pejman Nozad, Pear Ventures (#1)
Pejman Nozad holds onto the top spot for the third consecutive year as he continues to define early-stage excellence not by chasing hype, but by finding mission-driven teams long before the spotlight does. Nozad, co-founder of Pear Ventures, has mastered the art of spotting category-defining companies before their categories even exist.
While many others are only now shifting toward AI, Nozad was there early. He led a pre-seed investment in solar software developer Aurora Solar in 2014, last valued at $4 billion as of 2022. Additionally, he backed K Health at the seed stage in 2016 – the AI-driven telehealth startup is now valued at over $900 million.
Nozad’s journey from Iranian immigrant to one of Silicon Valley’s most trusted early-stage investors is already legendary. In a market full of hype, his long view continues to produce not just unicorns, but companies that make a lasting impact.
Relevant Investments*:
- Doordash
- Aurora Solar
- K Health
Gili Raanan, Cyberstarts (#3)
Gili Raanan has quietly built one of the most powerful portfolios in cybersecurity, cementing his place near the top of the Midas Seed List. As the founder of Cyberstarts, Raanan has been instrumental in backing companies that define the modern cloud and security infrastructure stack. Cyberstarts itself is well-capitalized to take on more deals: it recently closed a $480 million fund to double down on early-stage cybersecurity bets, despite controversy over a now shuttered profit-sharing program that paired startups and CIOs, highlighting the continued confidence in Raanan’s strategy and founder network.
Perhaps his most famous deal, Raanan’s $6 million seed bet into Wiz, a leader in cloud security, netted a massive 222x return for Cyberstarts thanks to its $32 billion sale to Google. This return – which many VCs can only dream of – underscores Raanan’s eye for leaders in cybersecurity. Also of note is Fireblocks, a leading provider of digital asset security, which went on to achieve an $8 billion valuation in 2022 after Raanan’s Series A investment. In a venture landscape where investors are chasing AI, Raanan continues to bet on winning security upstarts.
Relevant Investments*:
David Frankel, Founder Collective (#2)
David Frankel, managing partner at Founder Collective, continues to prove that staying focused and founder-aligned can generate massive returns. Ranked #2 on this year’s Seed List, Frankel is known for his disciplined investing style and his ability to spot global winners years before they break out.
Frankel’s portfolio reflects a global mindset, with early investments in South Korea e-commerce giant Coupang, which went public in 2021 at a $60 billion valuation, and language learning platform Preply, where he participated in the Seed round at a valuation of $12 million before the company rapidly scaled and most recently raised a $70 million round in 2023. Frankel also backed Shield AI, a leader in autonomous defense technology, in its Seed round in 2016. The company has now raised over $1 billion and was valued at more than $5 billion earlier this year.
Frankel has founded companies himself, and brings that perspective to his portfolio. In an increasingly crowded Seed landscape, he remains remarkably consistent, backing companies that scale with substance and longevity.
Relevant Investments*:
Semil Shah, Haystack Ventures (#15)
A consistent presence in early-stage venture, Semil Shah of Haystack has built a portfolio focused on the software and tools that power modern work. Among his standout investments is Figma, the collaborative design platform that transformed how teams build and ship digital products. While its proposed deal with Adobe valuing the company at $20 billion famously fell through, Figma was last valued at $12.5 billion in 2024 during a tender offer and is preparing for an IPO, showing impressive growth since its founding in 2012.
Shah’s portfolio also includes notable companies such as Protocol Labs, Applied Intuition, Ironclad, Mux, and Redpanda. His investments are centered on backing the builders behind the scenes, creating the next generation of tools for designers, developers, and data teams.
Relevant Investments*:
- Figma
- Protocol Labs
- Carta
- Ironclad
Sarah Guo, Conviction (#20)
New to the Midas Seed List in 2025, Sarah Guo has quickly become one of the most influential seed investors in generative AI. Since she founded Conviction in 2022, she’s been backing companies that don’t just use AI – they make it possible. Conviction raised its first fund in 2022, securing $100 million to back early-stage AI startups. The firm raised another in 2024, locking in a $230 million vehicle that reflects the growing demand for AI-focused venture funds.
Guo’s portfolio includes open-source model developer Mistral, legal AI startup Harvey, autonomous agents firm Cognition, machine learning infrastructure company Baseten and tooling platforms like Stackblitz and HeyGen. These startups represent the enabling layer for the AI applications of tomorrow.
Guo has stood out by placing early bets on the core technologies that will define the next generation of intelligent applications. She has been running full-speed since starting Conviction in 2022, and as AI continues to dominate the conversation, we’re excited to see where she’ll land on next year’s Seed list.
Relevant Investments*:
