Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund)
Microsoft's corporate venture arm, launched in 2016 as Microsoft Ventures and renamed M12 in 2018, which invests Microsoft balance-sheet capital in Series A–C enterprise software, AI and infrastructure start-ups. It sits beside a much larger body of direct strategic investments made by Microsoft itself, above all the ~$13bn OpenAI partnership, which turned Microsoft into the most consequential corporate investor of the generative-AI era.
At a glance
- Founded
- May 2016 as Microsoft Ventures; renamed M12 in July 2018
- Founders
- Launched under Microsoft corporate development by Nagraj Kashyap (corporate vice president, previously head of Qualcomm Ventures), with sponsorship from Microsoft's business development leadership under Satya Nadella
- Headquarters
- Redmond/Seattle and San Francisco; investment teams also reported in Tel Aviv, London and Bangalore (verify current offices)
- Ownership / structure
- Wholly owned division of Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT); invests Microsoft balance-sheet capital; no outside LPs. Microsoft also invests directly through corporate development and through the separate Climate Innovation Fund (2020)
- Leadership (2026)
- Michelle Gonzalez was reported as corporate vice president and global head of M12 from ~2021 (verify whether still in role). Chris Young, Microsoft EVP of business development, strategy and ventures (overseeing M12), resigned in January 2025. Cheryl Cheng joined as managing partner in October 2025 (reported)
- AUM / capital raised
- No disclosed fund size. M12 reports a portfolio of ~100+ companies (verify). Microsoft's direct AI investments (OpenAI ~$13bn committed; Anthropic up to ~$5bn; Inflection, Mistral and others) dwarf M12's own deployment
- Stage focus
- M12: mainly Series A to C, with typical checks reported at ~$3m–$15m (verify); corporate: late-stage and strategic partnerships of any size
- Signature investments
- M12: d-Matrix, Bonsai (acquired by Microsoft), Element AI, AnyVision (divested), Typeface and Inworld AI (verify); Microsoft direct: OpenAI, Databricks, Rubrik, Inflection AI, Mistral AI, Anthropic. Failures and controversies: AnyVision (divested 2020), Element AI (low-value sale), Builder.ai (2025 insolvency)
10 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2017
Bonsai
Series A
2017
Element AI
Series A
2019
AnyVision
Series A
2019
Databricks
Series E
2019
OpenAI
Strategic Investment and Cloud Partnership
2021
Rubrik
Strategic Equity Investment
2022
d Matrix
Series A
2023
Builder ai
Series D Strategic Investment
2023
Inflection AI
Growth Round and 2024 Licensing Deal
2025
Anthropic
Strategic Investment and Compute Partnership