2048 Ventures is a New York based venture capital firm founded to be the first-check, highest-conviction partner to technical and visionary founders at the very beginning of company formation. The firm is known for leading pre-seed and seed rounds with a strong thesis around data moats, backing companies where proprietary data, workflow ownership, and defensibility compound over time. Since inception, 2048 Ventures has positioned itself as a hands-on lead investor with a reputation for speed, founder alignment, and deep conviction.
In January 2026, 2048 Ventures announced the close of its oversubscribed Fund III at $82M. The fund size reflects a deliberate strategy to remain focused on pre-seed and seed investing while maintaining the ability to lead rounds with meaningful ownership. Fund III is backed by a high-caliber LP base that includes fund-of-funds, family offices, and a notable group of founders and executives from companies such as DigitalOcean, Duolingo, Duo Security, Google, MongoDB, Reddit, Red Hat, Tiger Global, Twitter, and Tempus.
Fund III continues the firm’s role as a first-check investor, typically leading rounds with $500K to $3M investments. The fund is designed to support founders from the earliest stages, often before product-market fit, and to follow selectively as companies scale. A key differentiator of Fund III is the firm’s continued emphasis on speed and founder experience, including initiatives like its Pre-Seed Fast Track, which allows founders raising up to $1.5M to move from first meeting to funded in as little as 10 business days.
Leadership
2048 Ventures is led by General Partners Alex Iskold, Zann Ali, and Julie Wolf. The partnership blends deep experience across venture investing, technology, and company building. The broader team includes principals, associates, analysts, and a dedicated finance and operations function, allowing the firm to support founders operationally as well as strategically from day one.
Investment Strategy
The firm follows a thesis-driven investment strategy centered on data as the core source of competitive advantage. 2048 Ventures studies business mechanics closely, focusing on how companies capture data, turn it into insight, and build durable moats over time. The team is particularly interested in systems of record, physical AI, sensor-driven platforms, and infrastructure that enables real-time measurement and orchestration across digital and physical environments. In biotech and healthcare, the strategy emphasizes infrastructure layers and differentiated intellectual property rather than incremental applications.
Notable Investments
Notable investments include:
These companies span vertical SaaS, AI-driven infrastructure, healthcare data platforms, and biotech tooling, reflecting the firm’s consistent focus on data-centric business models.
Notable Exits
Aerodome, acquired by Flock Safety, stands out as a representative exit aligned with the firm’s thesis around vertically integrated software and hardware creating defensible, real-world applications.
Other
2048 Ventures is widely recognized for its founder-first approach, including an unusually strong reputation for responsiveness and support, reflected in a reported founder NPS of 100 sustained over multiple years.
The firm is deeply embedded in the NYC and Boston academic ecosystems, working closely with institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, NYU, and Cornell Tech.
Its Fellowship Program provides students hands-on exposure to venture investing, further reinforcing its long-term commitment to early technical talent. Founders should also note the firm’s openness to cold outreach and its structured, transparent investment process.
United States
