Cerebras Early Backer Adit Singh Joins Mayfield
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- Adit Singh joined 57-year-old Mayfield as an infrastructure partner on Thursday, moving from Cota Capital; he will invest in hardware, infrastructure software, cybersecurity, and physical AI.
- Singh sourced and co-led Cerebras' first funding round ~10 years ago while a partner at Foundation Capital, which ended up holding a ~7% stake — the third-largest — now worth roughly $3.5 billion after the chipmaker's May IPO at a nearly $50 billion valuation.
- Singh co-founded Neotribe Ventures in 2017 after leaving Foundation Capital, ran it for four years, then moved to Cota Capital before settling on Mayfield.
- Mayfield's roughly $3 billion in assets under management lets it write seed checks of up to $20 million, a structural edge Singh cited as a draw as seed infrastructure deal sizes have ballooned.
- Singh pointed to Mayfield's semiconductor bets — Upscale AI, recently valued at $2 billion, and Lumilens, which raised $700 million at a $5.5 billion valuation — as evidence of "probably the best" semiconductor portfolio in the market.
- Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha said he has known Singh for 15 years and the two share three board seats, including Upscale AI and unicorn Velaura AI.
- Singh described himself as "a chip designer by training" whose electrical-engineering background lets him "look at any workload and see how it works from the application all the way down to the transistor."
Why it matters: Singh's track record turning an "obscure" chip startup into a $50 billion public company gives Mayfield a marquee name in a semiconductor investing category its peers are crowding into; his move also reflects a structural shift in seed infrastructure, where deal sizes now demand $20 million checks only large funds can write.
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