SignalFire

Firm Profile

SignalFire is an early-stage venture firm founded 2013 (first fund launched 2015) in San Francisco that built itself as a technology company that happens to invest — the original “data-driven VC.” The founding bet (Chris Farmer + Ilya Kirnos): that data and AI would become the foundation of how the best firms source, evaluate, and support companies, at a time when venture was treated as pure pattern-recognition and intuition. ^[extracted]

• What they back: applied AI as “the defining opportunity of our time,” across enterprise software, healthcare/digital health, cybersecurity, infrastructure/data, fintech, consumer, vertical AI. Sector-by-sector investment strategy with dedicated sector leads. signalfire.com/about
• Stage focus: pre-seed through Series B, hyper-focused on the earliest stages; “almost always lead… as the first institutional investors.” Deploys across Seed, Early, XIR (Executive-in-Residence), and Opportunities vehicles. Fund announcement · Farmer LinkedIn
• AUM / funds: ~$3BAUM\ast \ast afteran\ast \ast >$1B raise announced April 2025 (largest in firm history; prior haul was **$900M\ast \ast inearly2023).Deployedacrossseed/small-A+alater-stage"breakout"fund.Farmerhaspubliclycalledita"$2.1B AI-native venture fund” in older interviews — the ~$3Bfigureispost-2025-raise.[BusinessWire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250407594969/en/AI-Native-VC-SignalFire-Raises-Over-$1B-to-Fuel-the-Next-Wave-of-Applied-AI-Startups-Pushing-AUM-to-$3B) · TechCrunch · PitchBook
• Check size: not firm-stated; consistent with a multistage seed→A leader writing seeds in the ~$2.5M–$30M band (e.g. First Voyage $2.5Mseedparticipation;QualifiedHealth$30M seed lead; Solid $20M seed lead). ^[inferred from deal data]
• Geography: US-centric (SF HQ + NYC investment office), with India (Bangalore) coverage and small Switzerland/Australia presence. ~78–81 employees. LinkedIn
• Structure — the differentiator: Farmer designed SignalFire as a quant-style firm where engineers, data scientists, and portfolio-support staff have equal standing with investing partners — everyone gets carry, no individual deal attribution (inverting the “deal partner is the hero” model). A large non-investing org (data science, technical talent, developer community, operating partners, XIRs) sits alongside a relatively small investing team. ^[extracted]/^[single-source — VC Beast]

Beacon AI Platform (the engine)

SignalFire’s proprietary, full-stack data/ML platform, refined in-house for 12+ years. It tracks ~650M employees / individuals and ~80M organizations worldwide and powers all four pillars of the firm’s model: sourcing, picking (diligence/selection), winning (recruiting & GTM for portfolio), and portfolio support. Beacon is pitched to founders as a benefit — an “elite talent search engine, competitive intelligence, and sales-lead data all in one.” Self-reported support metrics: 85 NPS from portfolio founders, ~47 support interactions/company/quarter, 100% of companies in ≥1 SignalFire program within 6 months. signalfire.com · about

• ⚠️ Disambiguation: SignalFire’s Beacon AI is an internal platform, not the standalone aviation-safety company “Beacon AI” (San Carlos, CA; backed by Costanoa/JetBlue Ventures) that shares the name. Different entity. ^[disambiguated]

Partners

• Ryan Wexler — Principal (NYC), data infra / AI-ML / cybersecurity. Our contact. (relationship-track; see his page.)
• Chris Farmer — Founder & CEO; sets strategy. Ex-Venture Partner at General Catalyst (built the CA office; seeds incl. Stripe, Coinbase, Discord, Venmo, Fivetran, Zapier, ClassDojo). ^[extracted]
• Ilya Kirnos — Co-founder, Partner & CTO; ex-Google engineer (Gmail Ads, AdWords) + CardSpring (→Twitter). Builds Beacon; invests pre-seed→Series D (Grammarly, Ro, Frame.io, Grow Therapy, Horizon3.ai). Princeton. ^[extracted]
• Wayne Hu — Managing Director, Early-Stage Venture (partner since 2015). Likely partner-level decision-maker above the NYC team. ^[single-source — NFX Signal]
• Michael Mangini — leads the NYC office & investment team (named as the leader the NYC principals — Pezzullo, Liu, Jones, Wexler — work under). The likely partner-level escalation path for a Wexler-sourced NYC deal. ^[single-source — Bradford Jones LinkedIn]
• Tony Pezzullo — Principal (NYC); has recruited for the SF deal team (Series A/B enterprise SaaS, healthtech, vertical AI). ^[single-source]
• Lisa Liu — Principal (NYC, since 2023). ^[single-source]
• Bradford Jones — Principal (NYC); Forbes 30 Under 30 VC 2025. ^[single-source]
• Varun Ramakrishnan — Principal; led/quoted on the Vector ($10M A) deal. ^[single-source]
• (Non-investing leadership incl. Tawni Cranz, Jim Stoneham as Operating Partners; Ellen Blix head of IR.)

Recent pre-seed/seed activity (Pass-1 sketch — ≤5 deals; full pull = Pass 2)

Sketch only; source-tagged rows in /Users/sazzad14/seed-market-scan/firms/signalfire.csv.

• Solid — $20M seed, led by SignalFire (w/ Team8), Feb 2026. “Context platform” / semantic layer for AI agents; founders Yoni Leitersdorf & Tal Segalov. Ryan Wexler’s deal — he authored the thesis post and sits on Solid’s board. ✅ SignalFire blog · Axios via Wexler LinkedIn
• Qualified Health — $30M seed, led by SignalFire, Jan 2025. Responsible/governed AI for healthcare. ✅ SignalFire blog
• First Voyage — $2.5M seed, Dec 2025, SignalFire participated (lead a16z Speedrun, w/ True Global). Consumer AI self-care app (“Momo”). ✅ Crescendo AI
• Mega — $11.5M Series A, Mar 2026, SignalFire (lead, w/ Goodwater). AI growth engine for SMBs (SEO/ads/sites). Vertical-AI thesis (“specialized agents that perform specific business functions”). ✅ SignalFire blog
• Vector — $10M Series A, led by SignalFire + HubSpot Ventures, May 2026. Contact-level B2B advertising. Deal partner = Varun Ramakrishnan (not Wexler). ✅ Morningstar/PRNewswire
• Also seen: Patlytics $40M\ast \ast SeriesB\ast \ast ledbySignalFire(Apr2026,AIforpatentlaw)—later-stage,firm-led;appearsonWexle{r}^{\prime }steampagebutdeal-partnerattributiontohimis\ast \ast unconfirmed\ast {\ast }^{[}ambiguous].Solace$130M Series C (doubled down), Peer AI (life-sciences regulatory). Patlytics blog

Best data channels for this firm

• SignalFire’s own blog (signalfire.com/blog) is the single best source — they publish a detailed “Why we invested in X” post per deal with amount/stage/co-investors, and post it under the responsible investor’s team page (so blog → team-page mapping is the closest thing to per-deal partner attribution, since the firm officially does no deal attribution).
• Founder LinkedIn announcement posts reliably name SignalFire’s lead/participation + co-investors (verified for Solid, Patlytics).
• Trade press (TechCrunch, Axios, BusinessWire, The SaaS News, Crescendo AI) good for amount/stage/date; partner only via blog/team page.
• ⚠️ Attribution caveat unique to SignalFire: because of the no-deal-attribution culture + a large non-investing org, aggregator “partner” fields and even firm materials understate who drove a deal. Use the blog author / board-seat / team-page-post mapping, and treat it as best-effort. ^[inferred]
• Beacon is internal — not a public data source; don’t conflate with the aviation “Beacon AI” or with “SignalFire Wireless Telemetry” (see disambiguation).

Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)

• Fit characterization: SignalFire leads first-institutional checks pre-seed→Series B in applied AI, likes to own the early round, and brings a GTM/recruiting platform (Beacon). Fit tension: contact Ryan Wexler’s stated lane is data infra / AI-ML / cybersecurity, and init.inc’s AI-for-MSP wedge reads as vertical/next-gen-SaaS, not infra. The firm lists cybersecurity + vertical AI as core sectors, so a fit exists at the firm level even where it’s a stretch at Ryan’s personal level.
• ⚠️ Seniority: Ryan is a Principal (mid-level) at a ~$3B multistage firm with a no-solo-attribution, IC-driven culture. He does not write checks alone. Any real decision routes up to partner-level — Michael Mangini (NYC lead) and/or Wayne Hu / Chris Farmer.
• Conversation log (firm-level — detail on Ryan’s page):
  • 2026-05-26 — Raise-open message sent to Ryan Wexler (ghost since 5/5; treat as longshot; backstop = re-nudge via Cory Levy).
  • 2026-05-05 (Tue, 4pm) — Sazzad met Ryan Wexler in person at the SignalFire office. Outcome: relationship-track only — Ryan took Sazzad’s number to stay in touch; no deal process opened.
  • 2026-05-04 — Cory Levy made the intro.
  • ⚠️ Ghost since 5/5 — no responses from Ryan. Dead-warm (not Lost; no momentum).
• Mutual connections / warm path: Cory Levy (made the 5/4 intro → see Cory Levy). Escalation path within SignalFire would be Ryan → Michael Mangini (NYC) → Wayne Hu / Chris Farmer.
• Personal & rapport notes (firm-level): Culture is engineer-first, data-religious, anti-vibes — they pride themselves on Beacon and on inverting the hero-partner model. Their language: data/IP, measurable founder support, “lead the first institutional round.” Farmer/Kirnos publish heavily on “AI across all four pillars.”
• Live stage: tracked in the CRM (Google Sheet) — not duplicated here. Effective status: dead-warm / relationship-track.

Cross-check vs existing wiki

• No prior mention of SignalFire, Beacon AI, or any SignalFire partner anywhere in the vault before this page (grep clean across entities/, synthesis/, competitors/). No competitor cap-table overlap found — no conflict flags.
• The connector context partially exists: entities/karun.md already names Cory Levy (Z Fellows) as a connector node; this page + Cory Levy sharpen that Cory is the connector who produced the Ryan Wexler / SignalFire edge specifically. No contradictions.

Related

Ryan Wexler (our contact) · Cory Levy (connector / intro) · Karun (adjacent connector node)

Pass 2 deal pattern (2026-05-25)

Verified ~18-24mo window (Nov 2024 → May 2026). Full source-tagged rows: /Users/sazzad14/seed-market-scan/firms/signalfire.csv (13 rows: 4 in-window seeds + 9 Series A/B/C context rows).

• Lead-rate (seeds): High. SignalFire leads or co-leads most of its early rounds (“almost always lead… as the first institutional investors”). In-window pure seeds: Qualified Health (led), Peer AI (co-led w/ Flare Capital), Solid (co-led w/ Team8) — 3 of 4 led/co-led; only First Voyage ($2.5M, a16z speedrun lead) was a participation. Across all in-window rounds (seed + Series A/B), SignalFire led/co-led ~7 of 13.
• **Check/stage (firm-stated doctrine, from the Apr-2025 $1Bfund):\ast \ast pre-seed\ast \ast$100K–$1M\ast \ast (100plannedinvestments),seed\ast \ast$1M–$5M\ast \ast (60),SeriesA/B\ast \ast$5M–$30M\ast \ast (mostlyseedfollow-ons).Observedseedsrunbiggerthanthestated$1-5M band when SignalFire leads thematically (Qualified Health $30Mbundled,Solid$20M, Peer AI $12.1M)—i.e.thefirm-statedbandisthe\ast small-checkprogram\ast ;convictionleadsaremateriallylarger.⚠\stackrel{◯}{R}\ast \ast Combined-roundtrapconfirmed:\ast \ast QualifiedHealt{h}^{\prime }s"$30M seed” (Jan 2025) was actually a $5Mseed(Apr2024)+$25M Series A (Aug 2024) re-announced as one round at launch.
• Cadence: ~3-5 announced deals/quarter, but the firm-stated plan is ~160 pre-seed+seed investments over 2.5yr — i.e. the announced set is a small, curated slice; most pre-seed/seed is unannounced and not externally enumerable (recall gap). The blog surfaces only thematic “why we invested” deals.
• Sector mix (in-window): Health & PharmaTech is the heaviest (Qualified Health, Peer AI, Solace, VITL), then vertical/enterprise AI (Solid, Mega, Outmarket, Vector, Affiniti, Tofu), legal-tech (Justpoint, Patlytics), consumer AI (First Voyage). Cybersecurity (Wexler’s stated lane) under-represented in announced deals — Solid (data-infra/cyber-adjacent founders) is the closest.
• Partner attribution (despite no-deal-attribution culture): the blog-author / board-seat mapping works. Confirmed: Sooah Cho = Qualified Health + Peer AI (health/pharma lead); Ryan Wexler = Solid (our contact’s confirmed deal); Wayne Hu = Tofu; Varun Ramakrishnan = Vector; Tony Pezzullo = Outmarket (NYC). Wexler’s announced footprint in-window is essentially just Solid — a thin personal deal book, consistent with Principal seniority.
• Notable seeds: Solid ($20M,Wexler)andPeerAI($12.1M, co-led) are the cleanest “SignalFire-leads-a-real-seed” datapoints in scope; Qualified Health is the biggest but is a bundled/relabeled round.
• Best-data channel: signalfire.com/blog “Why we invested in X” posts remain the single best source (amount + co-investors + which partner via author/team-page mapping). Second-best: founder/company PR (PRNewswire/GlobeNewswire/BusinessWire) which names lead vs participant cleanly. Aggregators (Tracxn) mislabel stage (called Peer AI’s seed “Series B”). ⚠️ Name-collision noise is heavy: filter out “SignalFire Wireless Telemetry” (signal-fire.com, industrial gas sensors) and “SkyfireAI” (drone startup) — neither is this firm.