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A young VC closed a $10 million fund for AI seed startups. Here’s what he’s looking for and the pitch deck he used.

July 17, 2025
in News
A young VC closed a $10 million fund for AI seed startups. Here’s what he’s looking for and the pitch deck he used.
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A picture of Sam Awrabi, standing in front of old buildings and wearing a white oxford shirt with his arms crossed.
Sam Awrabi’s Banyan Ventures will back 36 AI startups in seed and pre-seed stages.

Banyan Ventures

31-year-old venture capitalist Sam Awrabi has raised $10 million to exclusively invest in AI startups, calling the technology “the dominant force of our lifetime.”

AI advancements will be “bigger than both mobile and web combined,” Awrabi said, in part because “the average person’s productivity will be increased 50% to 75% in the coming years.”

Awrabi’s AI Fund I will operate within his VC firm, Banyan Ventures, named for the tree whose prop roots enable it to spread. The fund specializes in AI infrastructure and software startups that have had the technology at their core since inception.

On the infrastructure front, Awrabi said startups working to reduce AI costs — from inference chips to cooling technology — have a massive opportunity.

“Nvidia is already worth $4 trillion, and we’re still in the early days,” he said. “Imagine what the new winners across the AI-native infra stack could be worth 30 years from now?”

On the app front, Awrabi seeks startups with “unique data access” and “high-leverage workflows” that could standardize how work gets done in a particular field.

To date, Banyan has invested in 14 companies, including AI inference chip company Positron, GPU server cooling startup Akash, and Italian AI legal assistant Lexroom.

It will invest in 36 startups in seed and pre-seed stages, most of which have already achieved revenue, and will cut checks ranging from $200,000 to $425,000.

Awrabi serves as the fund’s only general partner, and he’s entering a fiercely competitive AI landscape. Large VC firms dominate funding, though he believes Banyan’s specialization in AI gives it a unique edge.

It’s also increasingly hard to get in on seed rounds, Awrabi said, because AI startups generally require less funding, are generating more revenue, and are moving to Series A rounds more rapidly.

Having worked in AI technical sales since 2018 at Samsung-owned MissingLink.ai and then at Comet and as an advisor to various AI startups, Awrabi said his long relationships in the field provide a window into prospective deals and talent looking for fresh opportunities.

Here’s a look at the pitch deck Awrabi used to raise $10 million for Banyan Ventures’ AI Fund I. Some slides and details have been redacted in order to share the deck publicly.

Banyan AI Fund 1. Sam Awrabi, Founder and General Partner of Banyan

Banyan Ventures

Banyan's Pre-Seed & Seed investments have booked over $490M of revenue, a leading indicator for future returns 

AI Fund I will invest in up to 36 startups or more of this same caliber, often at the lowest valuations.

Banyan Ventures

Escape Velocity Investing: How Banyan Invests

Banyan Ventures

Escape Velocity Investing: How Banyan Invests

Banyan Ventures

Fund Overview

Banyan Ventures

AI Fund I Thesis: AI-Native Technology as the Dominant Force of Our Era

Banyan Ventures

My Journey to Building AI Fund I

Banyan Ventures

Sourcing: Unique, vetted, and diverse pre-seed deal flow in a three step flywheel.

Banyan Ventures

Selection: Methodical approach to Pre-Seed Investing

Banyan Ventures

I have built GTM support infrastructure to deliver value because I have scaled from Seed to Series B ($0 to $5M ARR) in the AI-Native space

Banyan Ventures

This Is Why Founders Love & Trust Banyan

Banyan Ventures

Why The AI Fund I

Banyan Ventures

I've shown I can invest along with the best as the first money in.

Banyan Ventures

New Managers Can Be Top Performers

Banyan Ventures

This AI-Native platform shift is the largest and fastest moving technical revolution that the world has ever seen.

Banyan Ventures

Only three funds have invested in more than 3% of unicorns at the seed stage from 2013-2023. We predict this percentage will be lower with AI.

Banyan Ventures

Potential Fund Scenarios

Banyan Ventures

I Have Hard To Match Operating Experience Building and Scaling AI Infrastructure Startups from the Pre-Seed to Scale

Banyan Ventures

I Have Hard To Match Experience Building and Scaling AI Infrastructure Startups from the Pre-Seed to Scale

Banyan Ventures

Seed Investments Are Top Performers

Banyan Ventures

Why AI-Native Infrastructure

Banyan Ventures

What I Look For In Founders

Banyan Ventures

The Banyan Advantage: deep roots in AI

Banyan Ventures

Disclaimers

Banyan Ventures

The post A young VC closed a $10 million fund for AI seed startups. Here’s what he’s looking for and the pitch deck he used. appeared first on Business Insider.

Tags: ai fundai seed startupawrabibanyan ventures vcfundfundingparticular fieldpitch deckprospective dealrevenuesoftware startupspecializationTechnologyvc firmyear
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