Battery is a research-driven, multi-stage technology investor that backs standout companies across the stage spectrum, from seed and early to growth and buyout. Its core conviction is enterprise/infrastructure and application software, now reframed around an 'AI supercycle' in which value accrues to the application layer and to companies that win on outcomes rather than the old SaaS 1.0 playbook. The firm's goal is to focus on great founders and management teams, compelling markets and technologies that can create tangible value, not just market hype. It prizes 'deep alignment' between founder and investor over brand, portfolio breadth or valuation.
A real, expensive enterprise pain quantified in time or money, ideally in a high-stakes workflow that incumbents and generic tools handle badly.
“Advisors spend up to 50% of their time on back-office tasks like documenting and preparing for meetings.” — Jumping Ahead: Revolutionizing Financial Advisory with AI-Powered Client Intelligence
“early-stage companies which are scaling and innovating, often outside the limelight, as market urgency grows” — Dharmesh Thakker, Bill Binch, Jason Mendel, Sudheendra Chilappagari
A bold-vision product that moves customers from AI experimentation to production, wins on product velocity and UX, and embeds into critical workflows rather than being a thin feature.
“we fell in love with the bold vision of solving the quality-measurement problem for AI with unstructured data” — From Idea to Reality: Our Early-Stage Playbook for Generative AI Companies Serving the Enterprise
“Focusing on product design and user experience—which we view as an offensive force to drive fast product adoption—while simultaneously doubling down on product innovation and R&D.” — Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan, Jason Mendel, Sudheendra Chilappagari, Neeraj Modi
A compelling, large and shifting market where AI is disrupting software, services and labor; founders should tie their wedge to a credible path into that value pool.
“Our estimate is that $4 trillion or more in market value is up for grabs as AI moves toward disrupting software, services and certain labor markets in the coming years.” — Inside the Coming AI Supercycle (2024 State of OpenCloud Report)
“Future value will accrue to the application layer, specifically to those companies that can leverage outcome-based pricing.” — Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan, Jason Mendel
Real, named enterprise customers in production, strong logo velocity, and gross retention/usage that proves the use case delivers durable value—plus new AI-specific metrics.
“Gross retention and usage patterns are the clearest indicators of whether a use case is delivering durable value.” — It's Here: The AI Supercycle Has Arrived
“impressive, enterprise customer base, including customers like Twilio, Chegg, HP, Procter & Gamble” — Dharmesh Thakker, Bill Binch, Jason Mendel, Sudheendra Chilappagari
“Some of these new metrics include the percent of valid or accurate AI responses your product delivers, and the specific revenue your product added, or the time/cost it saved.” — Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan, Jason Mendel, Sudheendra Chilappagari, Neeraj Modi
Seasoned, technical founders—often former operators or big-tech AI leaders—where Battery can reach 'deep alignment' on the company's identity and reasoning.
“talented technical founders who previously led AI teams at Google and Uber” — From Idea to Reality: Our Early-Stage Playbook for Generative AI Companies Serving the Enterprise
“Deep alignment demands more. It only develops if you and your investor have discussed each of the identity topics in detail and emerged confident that you fundamentally agree” — Marcus Ryu
Value/outcome-based pricing aligned to customer impact, a land-and-expand wedge motion, and a monetization model that resists commoditization.
“Value-based pricing captures the impact of AI, aligns pricing with successful customer outcomes.” — It's Here: The AI Supercycle Has Arrived
“Start with a focused wedge, land quickly and expand.” — Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan, Jason Mendel
A credible, defensible moat—proprietary data/IP, owned stack layers, and deep workflow embedding—given that product-only moats erode fast in the AI era.
“Product moats today are fleeting, as the pace of AI innovation far outpaces any single company's ability to create lasting defensibility.” — Kingdoms and Courts: The 'Windsurf Effect' and How We Get Back to Normal in Tech M&A
“As companies own more proprietary aspects of their respective stacks, value will accrue to their unique IP.” — Danel Dayan
“In 2026, data moats will become real as application companies increasingly post-train open-weight models on proprietary data.” — Jason Mendel
A clear platform-shift catalyst—the AI supercycle, enterprises moving from pilots to production, agentic systems, and behavior/regulatory shifts—that makes the company inevitable now.
“The AI supercycle is here.” — It's Here: The AI Supercycle Has Arrived
“We are still in the early innings of this transformation.” — Dharmesh Thakker, Danel Dayan, Jason Mendel
“Thirty-three percent of enterprises already run agentic AI in production, and another 48 percent plan to deploy it within 12 months” — Justin Goering, Steve Witte, Patrick Elsner
“Virtual meetings have become the new norm for financial advisors. This shift has created a demand for tools that streamline virtual interactions.” — Dharmesh Thakker, Sudheendra Chilappagari, Hailey Wilcox
Founders who choose investors on deep alignment over valuation/brand and can articulate where capital goes; Battery offers hands-on help shipping product, hiring and customer intros.
“This reasoning overlooks a criterion that matters incomparably more than investor brand, breadth of portfolio services, star power of the investing partner – or, yes, valuation.” — The Right Criteria for the Right Investor
“we helped Galileo get its first products out the door and also assisted the company with customer introductions, marketing and making key hires” — Dharmesh Thakker, Bill Binch, Jason Mendel, Sudheendra Chilappagari
“we continue to believe in the power of innovation at the infrastructure and application layers, where we think there's a huge opportunity for value creation”
“This reasoning overlooks a criterion that matters incomparably more than investor brand, breadth of portfolio services, star power of the investing partner – or, yes, valuation.”
“Product moats today are fleeting, as the pace of AI innovation far outpaces any single company's ability to create lasting defensibility.”