SR

Shelly Rao

Director, Corporate Development & Ventures at Juniper Networks

San Francisco, California

Overview 

Shelly Rao is currently serving as an Investment Director at Juniper Ventures in San Francisco, California. With a background in investment banking and corporate finance, Shelly has successfully led investments in companies like Cohere Technologies (Series D) and ZEDEDA (Series A) while focusing on sectors such as Space, Cybersecurity, and AI. Shelly's career highlights include holding leadership roles at Juniper Networks and Universal Hydrogen, as well as making strategic investments in companies like Fungible (Series C) and demonstrating expertise in financial modeling, mergers & acquisitions, and venture financing.

Work Experience 

JN

Juniper Networks

  • Director, Corporate Development & Ventures

    2024 - Current

    Drive venture investments and partnerships across cybersecurity, AI, data and quantum. Select investments: Zededa (Observer), Akka fka: Lightbend (Observer), K2 cyber (acquired by New Relic), Fungible (acquired by Microsoft), Quantum Bridge (Observer), among other undisclosed transactions.

  • Principal, Corporate Development & Ventures

    2022 - 2024

Juniper Networks is a networking company that markets and develops networking products for enterprise companies.

Raised $43,004,920.00 from New Enterprise Associates.

juniper.net

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  • Investor/Advisor

    2020

    Personal angel investments/advisor: - Orb (enterprise, series A) - OpenAI (AI, Series D, SPV) - Rain (fintech, series B+) - Exosonic (aerospace, seed) - Anysignal (enterprise, series A) - Stealth (industrial, seed)

UH

Universal Hydrogen

  • VP, Finance & Operations

    2021 - 2021

    Backed by Playground Global, Universal Hydrogen is on a mission to make carbon-free aviation a reality.

KC

Kepler Communications Inc.

  • Head, Director of Finance

    2019 - 2021

    Backed by IA, Costanoa, Tribe Capital and Canaan, Kepler designs, builds, launches, and operates an advanced network of low earth orbit satellites with the ultimate goal of bringing internet to outer space. As the first finance hire reporting to the CEO, I oversaw FP&A, accounting, corporate development and fundraising activities, as the team grew from ~30 to 150 employees.

  • Finance Manager

    2019 - 2019

CC

CIBC Capital Markets

  • Associate, Investment Banking

    2017 - 2019

    M&A

NB

National Bank of Canada

  • Sales & Trading and Investment Banking

    2014 - 2017

    Financial Markets Rotation Program Investment Banking Analyst 2014-2016, Associate, 2017

N

Nomura

  • Sales & Trading Intern

    2012 - 2012

VC

Value Contrarian Asset Management Inc.

  • Summer Intern

    2010 - 2010

Education 

Investments 

Cohere Technologies

Series D

Total funding: $81M

ZEDEDA

Series A

Total funding: $150M

Fungible

Series C

Total funding: $290M

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