Nathan Benaich

Overview

Nathan Benaich is the founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, a venture capital firm investing exclusively in AI-first companies. Air Street Capital focuses on companies where artificial intelligence is central to the product and business model, including areas such as frontier AI models, AI infrastructure, autonomous systems, and AI applications. The firm primarily invests at the pre-seed and seed stages, often working with companies at their earliest institutional financing. Air Street Capital is known for its deep engagement on product, technical strategy, and market positioning, particularly where companies are navigating rapid advances in AI capability. The firm selectively makes growth-stage investments into category-leading AI-first companies. Air Street Capital is closely coupled to the frontier of AI research and industry, publishing the State of AI Report, an independent annual analysis of global progress in artificial intelligence covering research, industry, geopolitics, and safety. The firm's portfolio includes a concentrated set of AI-first companies spanning frontier research, infrastructure, autonomy, and applied AI. Notable investments include ElevenLabs, Synthesia, Wayve, Crusoe, Lambda, poolside, PolyAI, Chroma, and Stripe. Air Street Capital has backed over 60 AI-first companies, with significant exits such as Graphcore (acquired by SoftBank), Adept (acquired by Amazon), Exscientia (NASDAQ: EXAI), Recursion (NASDAQ: RXRX), Mapillary (acquired by Meta), Jukedeck (acquired by ByteDance), and Ravelin (acquired by Worldpay).

Investment Focus

• AI-first companies
• Pre-Seed to Growth stages
• Global focus with emphasis on Europe and United States
• Technically differentiated and research-driven products

Portfolio Companies