🚀 Big news: M12 portfolio company RegScale has raised a $30M+ Series B to reshape how enterprises manage cyber GRC. As cyberattacks escalate and regulatory requirements grow more complex, compliance can no longer be a slow, manual process. With cyber threats rising and regulatory pressure increasing, organizations need security and compliance that move at the speed of business. RegScale’s AI-powered continuous controls monitoring platform is already delivering results: ✅ 60% faster audit prep ✅ 3–4x faster FedRAMP High authorizations ✅ Up to 80% greater accuracy ✅ 10x staff efficiency gains This raise will accelerate RegScale’s expansion across highly regulated industries — from government and financial services to energy and utilities — where real-time compliance is mission-critical. We look forward to supporting Travis Howerton and the RegScale team as they expand into this next phase of growth! https://lnkd.in/gyveNjPt
M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
San Francisco, California 45,720 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
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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
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Primary
Get directions
1355 Market St
San Francisco, California, US
Employees at M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund
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Tero Collin
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Todd Graham
Early stage investing in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and developer tools
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Ann Johnson
Technology Executive. Deputy CISO. Board Member. Corporate Vice President- Microsoft
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Steve Milner
Sales Director, Strategic Accounts, Global ISV, Software and Digital Platforms
Updates
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We're thrilled to welcome the micro1 team to the M12 portfolio! micro1 partners with leading #AI labs to help teams find and manage top engineering talent for data labeling and training. As AI models scale, talent is becoming just as critical as compute. Data pipelines depend not just on infrastructure, but on the people building, labeling, and maintaining them. Congratulations to Ali Ansari and the micro1 team on your Series A. We’re looking forward to working with you and helping accelerate growth together. 🚀
I’m excited to announce micro1 has raised a $35M Series A, valuing us at $500M. This round was led by 01A, with Adam Bain joining our board of directors. We’re grateful to be partnering with leading AI Labs & fortune 10s, such as Microsoft, to train frontier LLMs. We’re just getting started building the infrastructure layer for AGI, with the ultimate goal of answering the very fundamental question: “where should humanity spend its time?”
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🚨 The latest M12 Founders Feature is here! 🚨 This month, we spoke with Kylan Gibbs, co-founder of M12 portfolio company Inworld AI. In just a few years, Inworld scaled from startup to a $500M leader in consumer AI, powering next-gen gaming, media, and interactive experiences. At the core is their groundbreaking AI Runtime, which helps developers go from prototype to production in days and scale to millions of users with minimal code changes. In our feature, Kylan shares: 💡 How Inworld is transforming interactive entertainment 💡 Why consumer AI is the next frontier beyond chatbots 💡 His advice for founders building the next generation of applications Read the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/eg4Tdxvr
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CISOs and CIOs have faced an impossible tradeoff: move fast with #AI, or keep data secure. That tradeoff ends today. M12 portfolio company Relyance AI launched the world’s first Data Defense Engineer — an AI-native breakthrough that continuously maps, monitors, and protects sensitive data at machine speed. And the early results? 1,660% jump in visibility in just 3 weeks for one customer. Proof that secure AI at scale is here — not out of reach. Read more in Help Net Security: https://lnkd.in/gfccTwMD
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Kudos to M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund portfolio company d-Matrix on today's unveiling of JetStream, an input/output (I/O) card designed to deliver data center–scale AI inference. Learn more below about how this innovation is unlocking the next age of AI by enabling greater performance, efficiency, and scalability ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eg_W-NcS
Exciting news today as we unveil our JetStream™ I/O Accelerator, a groundbreaking innovation aimed at delivering ultra-low latency multi-node AI inference. Together with Corsair™ accelerators and Aviator™ software, JetStream enables up to 10x faster performance, 3x better cost-performance, and 3x higher energy efficiency than GPU-based solutions. JetStream marks a significant expansion of d-Matrix's inference acceleration platform, integrating compute, software, and networking to pave the way for scalable and lightning-fast AI solutions. The JetStream NICs are currently in the sampling phase, with full production slated by year-end. Learn more about JetStream: https://lnkd.in/ggkdVbCn #AI #Inference #GenAI #dMatrix
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Scaling to production is where startups prove their strength. At M12, we see again and again that the magic moment comes not just from breakthrough technology, but from reducing friction, integrating seamlessly into workflows, and enabling teams to adopt with confidence. Michelle Gonzalez captures it perfectly: pilots are just the beginning. True impact comes when startups build systems that can scale, sustain, and deliver value at the enterprise level.
Pilots are easy. Production is hard. A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study echoes what we’re seeing at @M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund: the real challenge isn’t launching a pilot—it’s scaling to production. Startups that succeed don’t just ship features. They build systems: instrumented, auditable, and continuously learning. Feedback loops (often with human still in-the-loop) are essential. So are the fundamentals: usability, reliability, compliance, and cost discipline. In recent conversations with enterprise customers and M12 founders, one theme stood out: reducing friction in existing workflows creates the “magic moment.” One buyer summed it up after a 30-minute pitch from one our port cos: “Your product is magic.” Sometimes the magic is in the product. Other times, it’s the product combined with services that make integration seamless. Both are powerful. And today’s LinkedIn research shows many employees feel overwhelmed by new AI tech—so at least today, fitting into existing workflows isn’t just a nice to have, it can be critical. Some of questions we keep asking as we evaluate startups: How are you crossing the chasm from pilot to production? Where are you removing friction? How do you retrain and adapt to existing workflows to drive adoption?
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Congrats to our portfolio company Sola Security on their $35M Series A funding — fueling their mission to transform cybersecurity for the AI era and redefine how the toughest security challenges are solved. As M12 Managing Partner Todd Graham shared: "Sola is exactly the kind of company we love working with: a founding team with an extraordinary vision, a product that proves itself quickly, and a team that sees opportunity in every challenge." We’re excited to support Sola during this next chapter. https://lnkd.in/eSNm3R-x
We just raised $35M in our Series A. Total funding: $65M. Total vibe: 🚀💫 In just 6 months, 2,000+ users built 1,000+ custom security apps on Sola. It’s clear that AI for security isn’t “someday”, it’s right now. This round (led by S32, with M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund and New Era Capital Partners joining the party) means we get to make Sola’s AI even smarter, faster, and stronger. Huge thanks to our investors,new and returning, for believing security should be simple, not soul-crushing. And an even bigger thanks to our users for proving it. We’re so grateful to be building this future with you. Security is about to go from months to minutes. That’s the Sola AI difference ✨ https://lnkd.in/ex57Kc_k
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#ThrowbackThursday to our panel at BITKRAFT Ventures's 2024 Summit where our own Michael Stewart joined industry leaders to discuss what it really takes to build production-ready AI in gaming. The takeaway that still holds true: there's no shortcut to quality—successful AI integration requires custom models, hybrid infrastructure, and completely reimagined team workflows. 🎮🤖
What does it really take to build with AI in mind? Jens Hilgers explored this at BITKRAFT’s 2024 Summit with esteemed panelists Kylan Gibbs (Inworld AI), Yasmina B. (NVIDIA) and Michael Stewart (M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund). Together, they offered a blueprint for studios building beyond the demo. Here are the highlights: 🔧 1. Quality isn’t optional AI-generated content must meet the same standards as handcrafted assets. Novelty fades but what sticks is polish, pacing, and precision. If it doesn’t feel native to the game world, it doesn’t belong in production. 🧠 2. Context-aware AI is the baseline AI must respond to the game state: what are the players doing, what’s happening in the world, what’s just occurred. Without this awareness, AI behaviors feel generic and immersion breaks. ⚙️ 3. Hybrid infrastructure is the future The sweet spot: inference happens locally for low latency; coordination happens server-side for consistency across multiplayer and persistent worlds. Think Unreal rendering models but for AI. 🛠️ 4. No plug-and-play: customization is everything Every studio needs unique models, pipelines, and tuning. Off-the-shelf doesn’t cut it. The process is slow, intensive, and highly variable and that’s exactly what it takes to ship something real. 💬 5. AI integration reshapes team structure You don’t just adopt AI, you adapt your workflows. That means new roles (AI designers, narrative technologists), humans-in-the-loop and embedded iteration between design and ML are all key. Want to know more? Link to the full video in the comments 👇
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The next compute frontier won’t be on Earth. It will be in orbit. Terrestrial infrastructure is already hitting its limits, but space changes the equation: - Continuous power from unlimited solar energy - Cooling from the vacuum of space that boosts efficiency - Hardware that lasts longer with less environmental stress - In-orbit processing that lowers latency and reduces ground dependence The real breakthrough will come from capital efficiency. Companies that license IP, retrofit satellites, and leverage launch capacity — instead of rebuilding everything from scratch — will move the fastest. Compute will scale to space. The only question left is speed. What do you see as the biggest accelerator?
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We’re excited to welcome Peter Lenke, CFA as our newest Managing Partner at M12. Peter brings deep expertise across AI, enterprise, and B2B SaaS investments—and a sharp perspective on where innovation is headed. 📖 Read our Q&A with Peter to hear more about his investment philosophy and what excites him most in the market.