Steve Jang
Managing Partner at Kindred Ventures
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Founder & Managing Partner
2014 - Current
Based in San Francisco, Kindred Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund which focuses on AI, Deep Tech, and Crypto, and invests as a lead investor in the earliest stage rounds of startups. Our mission is to find and invest in world-class founders who seek to solve important problems and bring massive and positive change to society and economy using technology. While we are thrilled to invest in theme areas we've invested in heavily in the past, we also are deeply curious about exploring new frontiers where we can learn alongside the founders we back. Since inception, we've backed over 100 companies at early stages in different theme areas, including AI, Computing, Consumer/Social, Crypto/Web3, Developer Tools, Data Infrastructure, Fintech, Health, Marketplaces, Mobility, and Synthetic Biology. Some of the notable startups that have become leaders in their space are public companies such as Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), which are both now part of the S&P 500 index. Today, Kindred Ventures backs many pioneering early and growth stage companies, like Perplexity AI, Fal, PlayAI, Tala, Color Health, Tonal, Opal, Whisper Aero, Heartbeat Health, Magic Eden, and Zora.
Kindred Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital fund that supports startup companies.
Investor & Board Member
2024
Lightning-fast inference platform for Generative Media. Customizes and hosts open-source and closed-source AI models, specializing in image, video, and audio generation.
Generative Media Platform for Developers
Raised $23,000,000.00 from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Julien Chaumond, Kindred Ventures, Aravind Srinivas and Guillermo Rauch.
Investor & Board Member
2023
The AI-powered Answer Engine Platform with Deep Research, AI Browser, and a Mobile Voice Assistant.
Perplexity is an AI-chat-based conversational search engine that delivers answers to questions using language models.
Raised $165,000,000.00 from IVP, Wayra and SoftBank Vision Fund.
Investor & Board Member
2024
Frontier Lab focused on Voice AI and Speech Models. Acquired by Meta in 2025.
PlayAI offers AI voice models for natural and emotive conversations.
Raised $23,650,000.00 from Soma Capital, Amr Awadallah, Pioneer Fund, Race Capital, Kindred Ventures, Y Combinator, TRAC and 500 Global.
Investor & Board Member
2021
The population-scale digital health screening and care navigation platform for employers and public organizations. Focused on genomics, viral diseases, and cancer.
Color is a healthcare delivery platform that offers cancer prevention, screening programs, and healthcare services for people.
Raised $482,000,000.00 from T. Rowe Price, General Catalyst, Kindred Ventures, WR Hambrecht, Viking Global Investors and Emerson Collective.
Investor & Board Member
2021
Building advanced quiet electric propulsion systems for air mobility and freight.
Whisper Aero is harnessing the power of air more cleanly, efficiently, and quietly than ever before.
Raised $40,500,000.00 from Aero X Ventures, LaunchTN, Abstract, Linse Capital, Menlo Ventures, EVE Atlas, Kindred Ventures, Connor Capital SB, Cosmos Ventures and Karman Ventures (fka Moving Capital).
Investor & Board Member
2020
leading digital strength-training and connected fitness platform using robotics, ML, and CV.
Tonal is a smart home gym that uses artificial intelligence and coaching to provide strength training.
Raised $580,000,000.00 from Cobalt Capital, Kindred Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Transformational Healthcare, Team Builder Ventures and L Catterton.
Investor & Board Member
2020
Multi-cloud DevOps for managing comprehensively all AI and Application Workloads.
Investor & Board Member
2020
Social Marketplace for onchain creative communities
Zora Labs is a marketplace for non-fungible tokens.
Raised $62,624,521.00 from Kindred Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures and Paradigm.
Investor & Board Member
2020
AI-enabled consumer hardware/software maker focused on productivity for creatives and knowledge workers.