Investors / 1517 Fund
1517 Fund
Venture capital
1517 Fund is a venture fund that backs dropouts, students, and deep tech scientists at the earliest stages of their companies. It was started in 2015 by cofounders of the Thiel Fellowship to support young, uncredentialed founders and renegade scientists.
Invests inAI & Machine LearningCybersecurity
In its own wordsdeep techsciencedropoutsstudentsearly stage
Your fit with 1517 Fund
Four questions about your startup
See how your round matches what it backs, point by point.
Or find every investor that fits1517 Fund lists 12 checked portfolio companies on its own site and is named in 4 funding rounds. Its most frequent entry is Seed, 75% of the companies with a known first round. Its largest themes are AI & Machine Learning (38%), Cybersecurity (19%) and Industrial & Manufacturing (10%). 86% of its companies are based in United States. It invests most often alongside Invariantes Fund, Long Journey Ventures and Salesforce Ventures.
Counts come from funding rounds that name 1517 Fund, complete from mid-2025: earlier rounds appear only when they were reported later. Round amounts and full round histories are on Fundup AI.
Round figures show recent activity, not 1517 Fund's whole history. Rounds on record name 4 companies; its own site lists 12. Funding rounds are complete from mid-2025, so counts and the yearly trend undercount a firm that invested before then. The portfolio, themes and places come from its own site and are not affected.
Entry stage
share of companies by the stage of its first roundShow as a table
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Pre-seed | 0% |
| Seed | 75% |
| Series A | 0% |
| Series B | 0% |
| Growth | 25% |
Activity by year
rounds it joined, last 10 yearsShow as a table
| Total | Rounds it led | |
|---|---|---|
| '17 | 0 | 0 |
| '18 | 0 | 0 |
| '19 | 0 | 0 |
| '20 | 0 | 0 |
| '21 | 0 | 0 |
| '22 | 0 | 0 |
| '23 | 0 | 0 |
| '24 | 0 | 0 |
| '25 | 1 | 0 |
| '26 | 3 | 0 |
Investor profile
percentile among all firmsShow as a table
| Measure | Percentile of all firms | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio size | 30th | 12 companies |
| Recent activity | 76th | 3 rounds in 12 months |
| Early stage | 82th | 75% of entries at pre-seed or seed |
| Evidence | 73th | 8% of companies confirmed by a round |
| Sector focus | 70th | 38% in its largest sector |
| Reach | 42th | 2 countries |
Investment themes
share of its checked companiesThis firmAll checked companies
Show as a table
| This firm | All checked companies | |
|---|---|---|
| AI & Machine Learning | 38% | 18% |
| Cybersecurity | 19% | 4% |
| Industrial & Manufacturing | 10% | 7% |
| Consumer | 10% | 3% |
| Enterprise Software | 10% | 8% |
| Human Resources | 5% | 1% |
| Media & Entertainment | 5% | 4% |
| Healthcare & Biotech | 5% | 15% |
Invests most often with
firms sharing its portfolio companiesShow as a table
| Share | |
|---|---|
| Invariantes Fund | 2 |
| Long Journey Ventures | 2 |
| Salesforce Ventures | 2 |
| Uncork Capital | 2 |
| Y Combinator | 2 |
| Accelerator Centre | 1 |
| Air Street Capital | 1 |
| Aloniq | 1 |
Its portfolio companies
where they are based, and what their own sites showSite status
- Site answers12100%
- No longer answers00%
- Points to another company00%
- Parked or sold domain00%
A site that stops answering three checks in a row is counted as no longer answering; that is not proof of closure. A site that points to another company is often an acquisition.
Co-investor network
who it backs companies with, and who they back togetherAll co-investors or Compare portfolios with Invariantes Fund
Compare 1517 Fund head to head
portfolio size, rounds, entry stages, themes and the companies both backThree or more firms at once: portfolio overlap.
Funds
from public registers and its siteRecent portfolio activity
when companies last raised with 1517 Fund| Date | Company | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Sept 2026 | Series C+ | |
| 30 Jun 2026 | Seed | |
| 29 May 2026 | Seed | |
| 7 Aug 2025 | Seed |
Round details for 1517 Fund
Amounts, full round histories and every co-investor in 1517 Fund's rounds are on Fundup AI. VCinfo covers investors and their portfolios.
Portfolio
12 companies checked against their own sites| Company | What it does | Themes | First round with it | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arcturus develops advanced conductor materials by infusing carbon nanomaterials into metals to improve conductivity and strength at high temperatures. | Industrial & ManufacturingAI & Machine Learning | Jun 2026Seed | Funding round | |
| Astrus develops software tooling that uses AI to empower analog designers to create advanced microchips. | AI & Machine LearningCybersecurity | Aug 2025Seed | Funding round | |
| FOSSA automates and accelerates license compliance, security, and SBOM management for all third-party code | CybersecurityEnterprise Software | Portfolio page | ||
| Fountain develops software for frontline workforce management, including hiring, onboarding, and scheduling. | Human ResourcesAI & Machine Learning | Portfolio page | ||
| Eeva makes a washer and dryer that works anywhere without plumbing or hookups. | Consumer | Portfolio page | ||
| Presso provides same-day dry cleaning services for laundromats | Consumer | Portfolio page | ||
| heypcb is an AI PCB designer that designs the board, including schematic, layout, and fabrication files, based on a user's description of the machine they are building | AI & Machine LearningIndustrial & Manufacturing | Portfolio page | ||
| Lambda provides AI compute services in the cloud, including supercomputers and private clusters for training and inference at scale. | AI & Machine LearningCybersecurity | Portfolio page | ||
| Loom provides a screen recording service for users to record and share video messages with teammates and customers. | Media & EntertainmentEnterprise Software | Portfolio page | ||
| Rainmaker modernizes the process of cloud seeding to make freshwater available to all through an integrated system of advanced radar, unmanned aircraft, and a weather awareness platform. | AI & Machine LearningAI & Machine Learning | Portfolio page | ||
| Positron develops and sells hardware for artificial intelligence applications, specifically for generative AI model inference. | AI & Machine LearningCybersecurity | Sept 2026Series C+ | Page + round | |
| Reprogram Biosciences is developing a groundbreaking immunotherapy approach that transforms cancer cells into immune-like cell types to combat solid tumors. | Healthcare & Biotech | May 2026Seed | Funding round |
About this data
site last read 5 Nov 2026- Site
- 1517fund.com
- Last read
- 5 Nov 2026
- Watching since
- 5 Nov 2026
- Rounds since
- 7 Aug 2025
- Companies checked
- 12
Rates come from what VCinfo has observed since observation_start. Firms tend to remove companies that closed, so early rates understate reality. A company leaving a portfolio page does not mean it closed or exited. An unreachable site means our checks failed, nothing more.
Get 1517 Fund's profile as data
Pull 1517 Fund's portfolio, co-investors and changes through one API key or MCP, open every portfolio row, compare it with other firms, and get an email when it adds a company or files a fund.
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