A fully subscribed fund supported by institutions and AI researchers, built to invest early in founders with deep technical conviction.
San Francisco, California / Access to Newswire / 16 September 2025 / Leonis Capital announced his fully subscribed Fund II of $ 25 million. The fund is supported by institutional LPS and a diverse mix of operators and founders in the AI industry with FOFs, foundations, as well as researchers and managers of Nvidia, OpenAi and Anthropic. This comes three years after the increase of fund I, as a result of the steady momentum and strong performance of the company. “Fund II represents a meaningful milestone in our evolution of a specialized boutique to build an investment platform for institutional quality that invests in one of the most important industries (in AI) of our lives,” says Jay Zhao, managing partner at Leonis Capital.
Jenny Xiao, Jay Zhao
Leonis Capital was founded by Jay Zhao, who spent more than ten years as a venture investor, investing in Enterprise, Mobile, Fintech and Cloud. He has invested in 11 unicorns, with 3 of those companies becoming public. Zhao and his previous fund were early donors of Marqeta, the leading fintech company that drives the “on-demand economy” as Doordash and Uber and eventually served on the board before the company became public. Moreover, since the early days, Zhao also supported unicorns such as lime and workboard.
In 2020, Zhao noted that most venture funds are increasingly driving rounds and influence during exaggerated indexing on consensus signaling instead of thinking of the first principles. “I thought that most of the daring martels missed the goal in identifying the next wave of transforming AI companies because they were disconnected from the technical foundations of a company, which may overlook the most innovative builders,” says Zhao. He believed that to build an intergenerational company that invests in AI, the company had to be structurally technical and research -driven, able to make early counterfeit bets based on deep technical understanding instead of a market momentum.
To realize this vision, Zhao collaborated with Jenny Xiao, who used to be an early employee and researcher at OpenAI and her doctorate from Columbia University. ZHAO brings the institutional investment discipline and business structure experience of a seasoned venture investor, while Xiao offers the technical depth and research covers essential for identifying real breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Moreover, Leonis also has 8 research maates with PhD students and researchers from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, etc., helping the company to promote fundamental research.
“We don’t just talk about technologies, we immerse ourselves in them,” explains Xiao. Through their research-driven approach, Leonis Capital is able to generalize their lessons into a thesis-driven approach that constantly evolves as the AI landscape changes. The company regularly publishes Extensive analysis and research documents Those on a large scale are spread among Silicon Valley AI founders, VCs and researchers. Some of their more striking works are their essay “Zero or Hero”, an analysis of 10,000-plus word that outlines how the company warns Foundation models And AI -Applicationsdistinguish between incremental improvements and real breakthroughs, and their 40+ page -Report profiling of the evolution of OpenAI From a non-profit research laboratory to the “Alle Platform” in AI. Their approach feels more like academic researchers who develop and test hypotheses than traditional VCs that chase deals.
“The Leonis team has clear and well thought out ideas about where AI is going and why. That is striking in an industry that is sometimes susceptible to hype-striking instead of deep thinking,” said Todor Markov, an early OpenAi researcher now at Anthropic, and also at Leonis Capital LP.
The research -driven approach of the company has already produced impressive results in his first fund.
Fonds I, a Vintage Fund from 2021, already performs in the top 1% of the venture funds in its vintage, according to PitchBook data. The portfolio has already generated remarkable returns. Some of Fund I’s early bets have also achieved unicorn status, with the biggest hits at 50x – 200x Markups and some portfolio companies have also left Big Tech Giants such as Nvidia and Google.
Include striking investments Maintenancean AI-driven maintenance operations ERP platform that was later supported by Bessemer and Bain Capital Ventures, which achieved a rating of $ 2.5 billion; Motion AIAn AI-FIRST project management platform has achieved a significant entry center since the seed investment of Leonis and later investments by Sam Altman and Scale Venture Partners. Similar processes apply to other fund I -portfolio companies.
“The Leonis team was concerned with our AI route map at a technical depth that distinguishes them from most other VCs with which we have interaction. The ability to connect technical possibilities with market realities helped us to build something that is not only innovative but commercially viable, the kind of guider that we really appreciate,” says Harry Qi, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai, Motion Ai Motion.
In addition to the impressive investment results, the Leonis team lays the foundation to build a platform for institutional quality. “For us, Fund II offers a chance to not only improve our research -driven methodology, but also to improve our decision -making quality with the latest AI Tech Stack,” says Zhao. The company has taken steps to build internal software tools and frameworks that systematize its approach to scale. “We are building an AI system that we call internally” Alfa “, trained in all our thinking, success, learning and experience. We expect that Alfa will improve over time as we build up more technology, such as our own signal follow -up systems that Presenten Github, academic papers and research conferences. “Systems such as Alfa help us to identify promising technical talent before the formation of the company, it also helps us to have more in-depth conversations with technical founders when an important AI-Native building block becomes available for builders (such as multi-agent Workflow, MCP, etc.).”
“What made the most impression on me about Leonis is how rigorous they think,” says Stefano Corazza, head of AI research at Canva and former head of AI at Roblox. “As a researcher and an operator, I see their technical depth and thesis-driven discipline as a rare company, and exactly what the next generation of AI founders need.”
Until now, LPS is not only impressed by the return of Leonis, but also with the knowledge of the knowledge they win from the research -driven approach of the company. “Leonis has built one of the most technically advanced investment platforms that I have seen: deep technical, methodical research and not afraid to go early if it counts. From an LP perspective they not only keep it at the border, they help to define it,” says Serial Founder and former LP Tseng Tonds.
Zhao and Xiao both understand how quickly the AI space moves and how in -depth and durable the impact of it will be on society. “With every technological paradigm shift there is a need for a new class of capital providers, who really understand the underlying physics of change,” Zhao reflects. “The best founders in AI are looking for more than capital, and as a company we see ourselves as the first partner for technical founders. We are convincing and we are research in our core. Ultimately, that is what is needed to build a permanent institutional business franchise in the AI era.”
About Leonis Capital: Leonis capital is a voice-driven daring company based in San Francisco, aimed at AI-Native companies. Since 2021 it has been working in the earliest phases with technical founders and combines the deep technical expertise with institutional investment experience.
SOURCE: Leonis capital
Related documents:
