U&I Ventures Closes Oversubscribed $32.2M Debut Fund, Taps 1,800 Tech Leaders to Shape Its Strategy and Has Already Backed Nine AI-Native Security and Engineering Startups 🥳
U&I Ventures - AGM September 30, 2026 | San Francisco, CA
Nearly a year ago, a CISO at a major insurance company called me.
“When you start your fund, I want to be your first investor.”
I told him I wasn’t starting a fund.
“Not today. But you will, and I’m your first check.”
He was right. And he wasn’t the only one. Hundreds more. Really a pull I was not expecting.
Getting here took an incredible amount of grit, a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-do-it mentality, patience, and willpower. There were days when people just said “good luck!” and there were days when people said “where do I sign?”
I grew up far from the rooms where venture capital is discussed. Yet, I have always had a deep passion for learning, technology, and people. Understanding how people think and what makes them tick is truly something that fills up my bucket.
I became a first-generation college graduate and earned my master’s at Harvard, but I broke into tech and venture capital without a network or a playbook. During my time at Asana, a recruiter called and said, “Just take the meeting.” So I did. From there, I listened and watched, and learned how great investors win deals, price them right and know when to lean in.
Photo from Business Insider covering Asana (2012)
I went from being employee #23 at Asana to Innovation Endeavors and Glynn Capital, backing infrastructure companies like Chronosphere and Drata.
Early on, I started asking every CEO the same question:
“What do you need besides capital?”
The answer was almost always the same: “I’d love to meet the CIO at that company.” So I found a way to reach that person.
Then I started asking the CIOs, CTOs and CISOs a question of my own: “What’s breaking that nobody is fixing?”
They told me, and usually well before the market caught on. My best investments came from those conversations. The operators running security, engineering and IT inside the world’s largest companies see the next category before anyone else does.
Along the way, I noticed who was missing from the cap table. The operators who tested, bought and championed these products were almost never invited to invest. U&I Ventures Fund I changes that.
U&I Ventures First Annual Trust Summit | October 1, 2026
Today, our community includes 1,800 senior technology leaders who meet in small groups across San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv and London. They tell us which problems enterprises are struggling to solve, and they’re among the first people our founders meet. We recently introduced one founder (that we backed!) to 68 CISOs in less than 24 hours.
Kim Moore (left) & Kim Cooper (right) | San Francisco, CA
None of this works without my partner, Kim Cooper. Google recruited her straight out of Stanford, and over the next 20 years she reported directly to Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and Susan Wojcicki, learning firsthand what it takes to build and scale one of the most important companies in history. We met more than a decade ago, when I was at Innovation Endeavors, and I’ve wanted to build with her ever since. Today, as our Founding Operating Partner, she leads our operator community and value creation platform, and works side by side with every founder we back.
Together, we spend our days in rooms with the people running security, engineering and IT at the world’s largest companies, many Fortune 500 names. Right now, the conversation is about AI. How the enterprise looks at risks, governance, optimization, and regulation within AI. What is new in the last 36 months is that agents now have the ability to have access to corporate credentials and sensitive systems and the underlying data. We have lively debates around who owns identity. Who monitors the agents. Who revokes access when something goes wrong? These are the problems we’re backing founders to solve. And the pace this is happening is at a speed the traditional enterprise is not used to. Innovation within AI has become a forcing function for boards to lean in, open up budgets, and modernize like we’ve never seen in history. We are excited to help fuel this early momentum.
U&I Ventures First Annual Trust Summit | September 30, 2026
What’s in our name. A lot, actually. U&I means two things. Urgent and important: the problems that can’t wait and the ones that matter most. That’s the filter for every company we back. And you and I, because none of this happens alone.
We built U&I to give this community a seat at the table. So if you’re an operator who sees what’s breaking before anyone else, or a founder building the fix, I’d love to meet you.
To the recruiter who said “just take the meeting,” the CISO who promised the first check before I knew I needed one, and every operator, founder, investor and friend who believed in U&I before it existed: thank you.
Joaquin Guzman (left), Kim Cooper, & Kim Moore (right) | U&I Ventures
And to our partners and kids, who gave up more nights and weekends than we can count, and to the family members who became our very first LPs: you believed in us first. We couldn’t have done this without you.
-Kim Moore
Founder and General Partner
U&I Ventures
Important Disclaimer: This article is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation regarding any security, investment vehicle, or investment strategy. Any such offer may be made only pursuant to definitive offering documents and only in jurisdictions where permitted by law. Any references to U&I Ventures, current or prospective investment activities, companies, founders, operators, markets, sectors, or investment themes are illustrative in nature and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Certain statements contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Past performance is not indicative of future results. There can be no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful or that any future investment will achieve results comparable to those discussed. Any views expressed are current as of the date of publication and are subject to change without notice. This publication is not intended as marketing material for any private investment fund. U&I Ventures does not accept capital through this publication and is not soliciting investors through this communication.
