All posts tagged: Kevin Hartz

Kevin Hartz’s A* just closed its third fund with 0 million

Kevin Hartz’s A* just closed its third fund with $450 million

Published by skeptic

Early-stage venture firm A* Capital on Tuesday announced a $450 million Fund III. The firm takes a generalist approach, backing companies across categories including AI applications, fintech, healthcare, and security.The average check size for this fund will be between $3 million and $5 million, with the aim to back at least 30 startups. The capital will be deployed over the next two to three years, as with the firm’s previous funds. Limited partners include nonprofits, foundations, and endowments; Carnegie Mellon University is among the publicly named backers. A* Capital, founded in 2020 and run by Kevin Hartz and Bennet Siegel, previously raised a $315 million Fund II in 2024 and a $300 million Fund I in 2021. Hartz is a serial entrepreneur best known for co-founding Xoom, the international money-transfer service PayPal later acquired for $1.1 billion in 2015, and Eventbrite, the event-ticketing platform that went public in 2018. The firm has also drawn attention for backing unusually young founders, even as the practice has become more common since. Hartz told TechCrunch last fall that …

Two Palantir veterans just came out of stealth with million and a Sequoia stamp of approval

Two Palantir veterans just came out of stealth with $30 million and a Sequoia stamp of approval

Published by skeptic

Edra, a New York-based startup that says it helps companies automate workflows by turning their existing operational data into a living knowledge base, just picked up a meaningful vote of confidence: a $30 million Series A led by Sequoia, with participation from 8VC and A*, the venture firm founded by serial entrepreneur Kevin Hartz. The founders are worth paying attention to. Eugen Alpeza and Yannis Karamanlakis say they met at university 13 years ago and spent years at Palantir before going out on their own — Alpeza building out major commercial accounts and leading the launch of Palantir’s AI Platform; Karamanlakis as the company’s first Forward Deployed AI Engineer, focused on getting AI models out of demos and into actual production. The problem they’re tackling is straightforward. Companies are sitting on loads of useful operational data — emails, logs, support tickets, chat histories — but have no good way to act on it. Edra says it analyzes that data automatically, builds a knowledge base from it, and keeps it updated. Current use cases center on …