Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California, founded in 2018 by John Vrionis and Jyoti Bansal. The firm leads seed rounds in enterprise software startups, with a focus on infrastructure, SaaS, fintech, and AI, providing hands-on operational support to help founders achieve product-market fit.
Founded —
Type Venture capital 3 Unusual Ventures Fund III 2022-05-05 2022-05-05 $485M Raised USD485m; historical AUM aboveUSD1bn distinct. Later successor/final deployment unverified.
Unusual Ventures Fund II 2019-11-18 2019-11-18 $400M Official contemporaneous raised USD400m; later 2022 TechCrunch USD425m discrepancy unresolved. Source reopened import; no expanded close inferred.
Unusual Ventures Fund I 2018-05-15 2018-05-15 $160M Debut seed fund raised at launch; USD160m not AUM.
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$6M $1M – $15M San Francisco Bay Area $5M $2M – $10M San Francisco Bay Area $4M $2M – $10M San Francisco Bay Area $3M $1M – $10M New York, New York $2M $500K – $5M San Francisco, California $250K $100K – $500K Boston, Massachusetts $250K $100K – $500K Menlo Park, California $250K $100K – $500K Mountain View, California $250K $100K – $500K Redwood City, California $250K $100K – $500K San Francisco Bay Area $250K $100K – $500K San Francisco Bay Area $250K $100K – $500K San Francisco, California $250K $100K – $500K San Francisco, California $250K $100K – $500K San Francisco, California $25K $10K – $50K Austin, Texas — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – — — — – —
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$24M 2026-07-15 Rime Labs Unusual Ventures $— 2026-04-06 Miravoice Unusual Ventures $— 2026-03-18 RAVEN.IO Unusual Ventures $50M 2026-03-12 Qdrant AVP , Bosch Ventures , Unusual Ventures , Spark Capital , 42CAP $— 2026-02-04 EnFi Unusual Ventures $125M 2026-02-04 Resolve AI Lightspeed , Greylock Partners , A* , Unusual Ventures , Artisanal Ventures $— 2026-02-02 Bits Cherry Ventures , Unusual Ventures $— 2026-01-22 Railway Unusual Ventures $— 2026 Theia Unusual Ventures $— 2025-12-11 Harness Unusual Ventures $— 2025-08-26 Aurasell Unusual Ventures $— 2025-07-31 fal Bessemer Venture Partners , First Round , Kindred Ventures , Unusual Ventures $— 2025-07-29 FluidCloud Unusual Ventures $41M 2025-04-29 Navro Bain Capital , Jump Capital , Unusual Ventures , Motive Partners , Lars Albright $— 2025-02-04 Sotira Unusual Ventures $— 2025 TYB Unusual Ventures $10M 2025 Chalk.ai General Catalyst , Xfund , Triatomic Capital , Unusual Ventures $— 2024-12-09 GovSignals Unusual Ventures $— 2024-10-10 Relyance AI Unusual Ventures $15M 2024-10-03 AirOps Unusual Ventures , Founder Collective , Wing Venture Capital $10M 2024-05-14 Purple Dot Unusual Ventures , Rachel Star $— 2024-03-06 Theia Unusual Ventures $— 2024-01-25 Kusari Unusual Ventures $28M 2024-01-23 Qdrant Spark Capital , Unusual Ventures , 42CAP $— 2024 Stigg Unusual Ventures $— 2023-08-01 Socket Unusual Ventures $7M 2023-07-20 Portrait Analytics Unusual Ventures , Lars Albright $— 2023-06-18 AptEdge Unusual Ventures $4M 2023-04-27 Bits Technology Unusual Ventures , Cherry Ventures , Lars Albright , Sophia Bendz $7M 2023-04-19 Qdrant Unusual Ventures $53M 2023-02-15 Descope Lightspeed , J2 Ventures , M12 , GGV Capital , Unusual Ventures , Silicon Valley CISO Investments $— 2023 CO2 AI Unusual Ventures $— 2023 Portrait Analytics Unusual Ventures $— 2022-11-02 Orum Unusual Ventures $— 2022-07-26 Kona Unusual Ventures $— 2022-06-02 TYB Unusual Ventures $— 2022-06-01 Ordr Unusual Ventures , Wing Venture Capital $— 2022-05-18 HumanSignal Unusual Ventures $— 2022-05-11 Socket Unusual Ventures $— 2022-04-27 Streamlined Unusual Ventures $180M 2022-04-26 Harness Unusual Ventures , Scott Beechuk , Rama Sekhar $16M 2022-04-12 Grain (video conference company) Bain Capital , The Slack Fund , Hanaco Ventures , Aleph , Freestyle Capital , Unusual Ventures $4M 2022-03-02 Enterpret Sequoia , Kleiner Perkins , Peak XV Partners , Unusual Ventures $— 2022-02-17 Goldcast Afore Capital , Unusual Ventures $30M 2022-02-08 End Game Unusual Ventures , Upfront Ventures , Kara Nortman , Sandhya Hegde $— 2022-01-18 Banyan Unusual Ventures $25M 2022-01-11 Wonderschool Uncork Capital , Unusual Ventures , Jeff Jordan , Chris Lyons , Jeff Clavier $— 2022 Goldcast Unusual Ventures $5M 2021-11-22 Fractional Y Combinator , Goodwater Capital , CRV , Not Boring Capital , Soma Capital , Unusual Ventures $— 2021-11-02 Contra Unusual Ventures $5M 2021-07-13 End Game Upfront Ventures , Unusual Ventures , Kara Nortman , Joe Morrissey , Sandhya Hegde $— 2021-06-24 Rasgo Unusual Ventures $— 2021-05-18 Styra Accel , Unusual Ventures $— 2021-04-22 Outlier Unusual Ventures $— 2021-04-20 AltoIRA Unusual Ventures $6M 2021-04-06 Mem Unusual Ventures , David Ulevitch , John Vrionis $— 2021-02 Connectly Unusual Ventures $85M 2021-01-14 Harness Unusual Ventures , Scott Beechuk , Rama Sekhar $— 2021 Launchable Unusual Ventures $— 2021 Harness Unusual Ventures $— 2020-10-14 Vivun Accel , Unusual Ventures $— 2020-09-02 Transposit Unusual Ventures $— 2020-07-22 OrthoFX Unusual Ventures $280M 2020-05-04 Robinhood Sequoia , New Enterprise Associates , Ribbit Capital , 9Yards Capital , Unusual Ventures $— 2020-05-01 Socratic Unusual Ventures $20M 2020-01-01 SUNSHINE Felicis , Unusual Ventures $9M 2019-10-22 Winnie Afore Capital , Day One Ventures , Unusual Ventures $— 2019-04-23 Harness Unusual Ventures $— 2019 Launchable Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date AppMap Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Connectly Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date BluBracket Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Rime Labs Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Paxton Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Raven Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Rive Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Alto Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Easel Unusual Ventures $— Unknown date Shujinko Unusual Ventures $50M Unknown date Chalk General Catalyst , Xfund , Triatomic Capital , Felicis , Unusual Ventures $— 2025 DragonFruit Unusual Ventures $— 2024 Theia Insights Unusual Ventures $4M 2023-04-05 Roboto AI Unusual Ventures , John Vrionis $— 2022-04-26 Harness.io Unusual Ventures $17M 2021-04-20 Alto Solutions Unusual Ventures , Sarah Leary $— 2020 Kloudio Unusual Ventures
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team@apexlogos.ai · 2 days ago
Investment-fund research reviewed 2026-10-06. Publicly identified funds, dates, amounts and fundraising status are below. Undisclosed commitments remain unknown; this is not a complete register of private SPVs or parallel entities.
Fund sizes and status
| Vehicle/measure | Amount and status | Dated supporting evidence and qualification |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Debut fund / Fund I | USD 160M, announced raised at launch | [Forbes, 2018-05-15](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/05/15/unusual-ventures/ ). The report describes a debut seed fund; not a target or AUM figure. |
| Fund II | USD 400M raised, announced 2019-11-18 | [Official announcement](https://www.unusual.vc/raising-the-bar-even-higher-for-seed-stage-founders/ ). Firm says it raised its second fund. |
| Fund III | USD 485M raised, announced 2022-05-05; latest-known verified fund announcement found | [Official announcement](https://www.unusual.vc/unusual-fund-3/ ). Not an investment budget or check size. |
| AUM at Fund III announcement | Above USD 1B as of 2022-05-05 | Same official Fund III source. Historical firm-wide AUM; not current deployable capital. |
A material Fund II discrepancy remains: the [Yahoo-hosted TechCrunch report, 2022-05-06](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unusual-ventures-just-closed-485m-194745397.html ), says Fund II was $425M, while the contemporaneous official 2019 announcement says $400M. Prefer $400M with its announcement date, and preserve the later $425M claim as unresolved; an expanded close is possible but was not documented in sources checked.
Searches for newer funds and Fund IV did not identify a reliable newer fund-close announcement. [Pipeseed](https://pipeseed.com/investor/unusual-ventures-399502 ) claims a $400M Fund III in 2021 and $500M Fund IV in 2023 (undated; accessed 2026-10-06). Its Fund III chronology conflicts with the firm's announcement; reject these figures pending primary evidence. Latest-known is intentionally narrower than asserting Fund III is still the latest fund.
Funds recorded in Adex after this review:
| Fund | Disclosed amount | Announcement / filing date |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Unusual Ventures Fund I | USD 160000000 | 2018-05-15 |
| Unusual Ventures Fund II | USD 400000000 | 2019-11-18 |
| Unusual Ventures Fund III | USD 485000000 | 2022-05-05 | SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 2 days ago
Match research 2026-10-06 / GoldiUnusualVentures / sha256:b3fe889abde96d2cd9ba7ca56a38d542f204ebdfb2ac3639de8871e2da7d4d09 / part 2 of 2
Imported completed research. Baseline Adex/Signal statements describe prior state, not independent verification. Retain cited attribution, date, currency and classification caveats.
1. Preserve exact ID `GoldiUnusualVentures`; the prefix is a database identifier, not a separate legal firm. Do not conflate with Unusual Machines, the drone company, or Unconventional Ventures.
2. Add Fund III USD 485M with the 2022-05-05 announcement and historical AUM separately; leave current AUM, deployment status and successor funds unresolved. Retain Fund II $400M/$425M discrepancy.
3. Add/verify Roboto AI as a direct seed investment; it is absent from the snapshot investment list inspected despite official evidence. Classify robotics infrastructure carefully.
4. Preserve Rime's seed-date conflict and distinct seed/Series A events. Its BCI-related founder biography must not be used as a neurotech investment label.
5. Do not attribute partner deals at Lightspeed, Khosla or Sequoia to Unusual. The baseline's broad team list may mix historic/current roles; personnel were not comprehensively refreshed.
6. Review duplicate entities such as Theia/Theia Insights and Chalk/Chalk.ai, and duplicated Harness participations before future database changes. Snapshot financing `amount` fields need semantic review; public round totals rarely equal firm checks.
7. No current official check sizes, neurotech mandate, comprehensive portfolio completeness, or successor fund legal filings were established. This is research only; no Adex/database edits were performed.
All URLs were accessed 2026-10-06. Publication dates are attached above; undated profiles/homepages are explicitly access-dated. Primary announcements establish attribution but their technical/product-performance claims remain company or investor statements rather than independent technical validation. SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 2 days ago
Match research 2026-10-06 / GoldiUnusualVentures / sha256:b3fe889abde96d2cd9ba7ca56a38d542f204ebdfb2ac3639de8871e2da7d4d09 / part 1 of 2
Imported completed research. Baseline Adex/Signal statements describe prior state, not independent verification. Retain cited attribution, date, currency and classification caveats.
# Unusual Ventures
- Exact Adex ID: `GoldiUnusualVentures`
- Canonical Adex page: https://adex.page/firms/GoldiUnusualVentures
- Official website: https://www.unusual.vc/
- Research date and source access date: 2026-10-06
- Status: complete research review; unresolved public-evidence gaps explicitly retained.
Unusual Ventures is the Menlo Park venture firm co-founded by John Vrionis and Jyoti Bansal in 2018, with a seed-stage software focus. Technical AI and robotics infrastructure investments are verified below; this is not evidence of a dedicated hardware or neurotechnology mandate. Identity/founding evidence: [Forbes launch report, 2018-05-15](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/05/15/unusual-ventures/ ) and [official Fund III announcement, 2022-05-05](https://www.unusual.vc/unusual-fund-3/ ). The current [official homepage](https://www.unusual.vc/ ) describes supporting enterprise founders and early-stage product-market fit (undated; accessed 2026-10-06).
## Adex and NFX Signal starting evidence
The existing snapshot `data/research/_sources/GoldiUnusualVentures.adex.json`, retrieved 2026-10-06, contains this exact firm ID and name, an enterprise software/seed description, Menlo Park location, many team roles and investment participations. Investor check minimum/maximum/sweet spot are null. Baseline links include the official site, https://signal.nfx.com/firms/unusual-ventures and https://goldi.ai/intelligence/vc/unusual-ventures . Its portfolio leads include Qdrant, Rime Labs, Harness, Resolve AI, OrthoFX, Kona and numerous application software companies. Some participations store company financing totals in `amount` while leaving round dates and round amounts null: do not interpret these as checks paid by this firm. Duplicate company names/rounds also need review. Baseline claims are not independent verification.
The [Signal firm page](https://signal.nfx.com/firms/unusual-ventures ) was opened directly, but subsequent accessible responses exposed only a sparse script shell rather than usable profile detail. The related [John Vrionis Signal profile](https://signal.nfx.com/investors/john-vrionis ) was directly readable, showing managing partner at Unusual, $100K–$500K investment range, $250K sweet spot, and $400M current fund size, plus enterprise/consumer/crypto rankings spanning pre-seed, seed and Series A (undated; accessed 2026-10-06). Search-index results additionally exposed Roboto and HumanSignal investment rows while the direct profile gated its full list behind sign-in. These are investor-level, potentially stale claims: $400M matches the historical Fund II announcement, not the verified Fund III amount. Do not transfer its small check range to the firm's current record without confirmation, or treat all Vrionis career deals as Unusual investments.
## Fund sizes and status
| Vehicle/measure | Amount and status | Dated supporting evidence and qualification |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Debut fund / Fund I | USD 160M, announced raised at launch | [Forbes, 2018-05-15](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/05/15/unusual-ventures/ ). The report describes a debut seed fund; not a target or AUM figure. |
| Fund II | USD 400M raised, announced 2019-11-18 | [Official announcement](https://www.unusual.vc/raising-the-bar-even-higher-for-seed-stage-founders/ ). Firm says it raised its second fund. |
| Fund III | USD 485M raised, announced 2022-05-05; latest-known verified fund announcement found | [Official announcement](https://www.unusual.vc/unusual-fund-3/ ). Not an investment budget or check size. |
| AUM at Fund III announcement | Above USD 1B as of 2022-05-05 | Same official Fund III source. Historical firm-wide AUM; not current deployable capital. |
A material Fund II discrepancy remains: the [Yahoo-hosted TechCrunch report, 2022-05-06](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unusual-ventures-just-closed-485m-194745397.html ), says Fund II was $425M, while the contemporaneous official 2019 announcement says $400M. Prefer $400M with its announcement date, and preserve the later $425M claim as unresolved; an expanded close is possible but was not documented in sources checked.
Searches for newer funds and Fund IV did not identify a reliable newer fund-close announcement. [Pipeseed](https://pipeseed.com/investor/unusual-ventures-399502 ) claims a $400M Fund III in 2021 and $500M Fund IV in 2023 (undated; accessed 2026-10-06). Its Fund III chronology conflicts with the firm's announcement; reject these figures pending primary evidence. Latest-known is intentionally narrower than asserting Fund III is still the latest fund.
## Investment stages
The official Fund III mandate is to lead seed investments in infrastructure, SaaS, fintech and consumer applications ([2022-05-05](https://www.unusual.vc/unusual-fund-3/ )). The 2019 official announcement likewise emphasizes helping founders progress from idea to product-market fit ([2019-11-18](https://www.unusual.vc/raising-the-bar-even-higher-for-seed-stage-founders/ )). Current homepage positioning remains early-stage enterprise. Verified seed leads include Roboto and Qdrant below; Rime establishes Series A follow-on participation. A follow-on financing is not proof that new Series A or later-stage companies are the primary entry mandate. No current official firm-wide check range verified.
## Named previous deep-tech investments
| Company | Technology rationale and attribution | Financing/date and supporting sources |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Roboto AI** | Strongest physical deep-tech exposure found: AI infrastructure for querying multimodal robot sensor/log data, including imagery, IMU and lidar, and accelerating robotics development/debugging. This is robotics software infrastructure, not ownership of a robot hardware developer. Direct firm lead verified. | USD 4.8M seed, investee announcement 2023-04-05; firm announcement 2023-04-06. [Roboto announcement](https://www.roboto.ai/blog/roboto-raises-seed-funding-4-8m/ ) names Unusual as lead alongside AI2 and FUSE; [Unusual announcement](https://www.unusual.vc/investing-in-roboto-copilot-for-robotics-data/ ) corroborates. |
| **Qdrant** | Technical AI/data infrastructure: open-source vector database and similarity search serving machine learning retrieval, semantic search and multimodal applications. Deep-tech classification is a reasoned infrastructure assessment, not evidence of physical science/hardware R&D. | Unusual led USD 7.5M seed, announced 2023-04-19. [Official investment thesis](https://www.unusual.vc/why-we-led-qdrants-7-5m-seed-round/ ) verifies firm attribution, round and technology. |
| **Rime / Rime Labs** | Proprietary speech synthesis models and conversational speech datasets; computational linguistics and model engineering support a technical AI classification. Enterprise voice infrastructure, not neural sensing or brain interfaces. Unusual seed lead and Series A follow-on verified. | [Rime seed announcement, 2025-05-29](https://www.rime.ai/resources/seed ) announces USD 5.5M led by Unusual. [Unusual Series A announcement, 2026-07-15](https://www.unusual.vc/announcing-our-investment-in-rimes-24m-series-a/ ) states it led seed in April 2023 and joined USD 24M Series A led by M13. The seed event chronology is unresolved: the 2025 announcement may describe a later announcement or additional financing; do not collapse both into a single confirmed date. |
All amounts above are company round totals, not Unusual's disclosed contribution. No portfolio-wide exhaustive deep-tech classification is claimed. Ordinary application SaaS, general AI adoption and employee well-being do not by themselves establish deep-tech or neurotechnology exposure.
## Previous neurotech investments
**No verified neurotech investment found in the sources checked.** The snapshot, Signal leads, official site/blog and searches for Unusual with neurotech, neurotechnology and brain terminology did not establish an attributable investment in neural recording, stimulation, BCI or other direct neurotechnology.
Rime deserves an explicit exclusion caveat: its [2025-05-29 announcement](https://www.rime.ai/resources/seed ) says co-founder Ares Geovanos previously worked at UCSF on BCIs for people unable to speak. Its current product is synthesized voice for enterprises; that founder background is not proof Unusual funded a BCI business. The [2026-07-15 firm post](https://www.unusual.vc/announcing-our-investment-in-rimes-24m-series-a/ ) confirms the background and speech-model focus. Snapshot Kona (employee well-being) and OrthoFX (dental aligners) also do not establish neurotech, and their financing claims were not independently reviewed here.
## Conflicts, gaps and later Adex review SHOW MORE
team@apexlogos.ai · 24 days ago
MATCH 
Navro$41M · 2025-04-29
Portrait Analytics$7M · 2023-07-20
Bits Technology$4M · 2023-04-27
Bain Capital
Grain (video conference company)$16M · 2022-04-12
Cherry Ventures
Bits$— · 2026-02-02
Lightspeed
Resolve AI$125M · 2026-02-04
Descope$53M · 2023-02-15
Robinhood$280M · 2020-05-04
A*
Aleph
Bessemer Venture Partners
fal$— · 2025-07-31
Bosch Ventures
Qdrant$50M · 2026-03-12
Chris Lyons
Wonderschool$25M · 2022-01-11
CRV
Fractional$5M · 2021-11-22
David Ulevitch
Mem$6M · 2021-04-06
Day One Ventures
Winnie$9M · 2019-10-22
First Round
Founder Collective
AirOps$15M · 2024-10-03
Freestyle Capital
Hanaco Ventures
Jeff Clavier
Jeff Jordan
Joe Morrissey
End Game$5M · 2021-07-13
Kindred Ventures
Kleiner Perkins
Enterpret$4M · 2022-03-02
Peak XV Partners
Purple Dot$10M · 2024-05-14
Soma Capital
Sophia Bendz
Uncork Capital
Y Combinator
