Gradient Ventures Fund V

Gradient Ventures Fund V is the fifth flagship fund raised by Gradient Ventures, a Google-backed venture firm founded in 2017 as one of the first investment vehicles dedicated exclusively to artificial intelligence. The $220 million fund closed in March 2026, bringing Gradient's total assets under management to nearly $1.2 billion across five discrete funds. Alea Capital led the institutional LP syndicate for Fund V, with Reflex Capital, Smartlink, and J&T Ventures participating alongside Google, which remains a continuing investor in the fund. Gradient's investment strategy centres on pre-seed and seed stage companies building across three verticals: AI applications, agentic platforms, and real-world systems that leverage AI as a core capability. The firm deliberately avoids funding foundational model companies and exercises caution around mega-seed rounds above $100 million, preferring to support emerging AI founders at their earliest inflection points. Gradient employs twelve investment professionals and has backed more than 500 AI founders across its fund history. Portfolio highlights include CentML (acquired by NVIDIA), Krea, Lambda, Range, Streamlit (acquired by Snowflake), and Writer. With Fund V, Gradient continues to leverage its unique position within the Google ecosystem to provide portfolio companies with access to Google's AI research, cloud infrastructure, and commercial networks.