Our mission is to help humanity achieve its true potential by investing in AI-native infrastructure and AI-native applications at the idea stage.
Our seed and pre-seed investments have generated of $100M of revenue. We back founders who defy the odds.
"Sam is one of the few investors that I have come across that is a true GTM expert for early-stage infra startups. His sharp insights repeatedly unlocked growth for us."
"Throughout my time working with Sam, I found him to be one of the only investors who combines technical, operational, and investment expertise in one person. This enables him to identify and evaluate opportunities in the AI space faster and more diligently than most, largely due to his experience at the forefront of AI scale-ups in multiple positions at various companies."
Banyan's Founder & Solo GP Sam Awrabi was the first sales hire in the two billion dollar experiment & model management market & has advised over 15 AI infrastructure companies in the past 8 years. Founders & CEOs in the AI sector bring Sam in as a senior advisor at day zero to help them scale, and this unique vantage point in the fast-moving AI landscape provides him with unprecedented access to exceptional early-stage investment opportunities.
Since 2018, Sam has been a pivotal figure in the AI infrastructure sector, advising or being the first sales hire at over 15 groundbreaking companies.
His journey began as the first revenue hire at MissingLink.ai which was acquired by Samsung in the newly formed Experiment Tracking Market. When Sam joined MissingLink, the entire market had low double-digit paying customers; today, there are over 2,000 & over $2B+ in enterprise valuation.
Following his success at MissingLink, Sam took on the role of the first revenue hire at Comet ML. There, he played a key role in scaling the company from seed to Series B, helping close deals with over 150 customers including tech giants like Uber, Cisco, Etsy, and Netflix. Sam further gained invaluable insights into how enterprises buy and build AI infrastructure, witnessing firsthand how a new category of AI infrastructure transitions from early adopters to late adopters.
After his tenure at Comet.ml, Sam founded Awrabi Consulting. Through his consulting, he advised leading AI startups such as Deci.ai, ClearML, Layer.ai, Datature, Deepnote, Activeloop.ai, Segmind, Nomic AI, and Ori.co, among others. His impact was significant: 54% of his advising clients went on to raise Series A funding, and 18% advanced to raise Series B. During this period, Sam also invested or advised four new AI Infrastructure markets, most notably was Deci.ai in the newly formed model optimization space which was acquired by NVIDIA, marking a significant milestone.
Fueled by these achievements and insights, Sam founded Banyan Ventures to further amplify his impact by backing the most crucial AI infrastructure companies.
His early investments through Banyan have shown promising trajectories, with the first three out of four investments on track to become valued at over $1 billion each.
Over $100M in revenue has been generated from Banyan's early-stage investments.
Average revenue growth per quarter after investing.
Investments in new AI-Native categories of software.
AI-Native LP's that support Banyan portfolio companies.