Santa Cruz Ventures Updates
Santa Cruz Ventures, a Santa Cruz–based venture capital firm focused on backing exceptional founders along the Central Coast, has announced an expansion of its investment thesis to include select mid-to-late stage venture capital opportunities, signaling an important milestone in the region’s evolving innovation ecosystem.
The expansion reflects the growing maturity of companies emerging from Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties; many of which are now building toward national and global scale. According to the firm, the broadened mandate unlocks access to businesses addressing massive markets with credible paths to well above $1B+ outcomes, while maintaining deep ties to the local community.
Santa Cruz Ventures was originally formed to support early-stage founders in the region. Over time, its proximity to top local entrepreneurs, operators, and regional institutions has increasingly surfaced opportunities further along the growth curve; a natural extension of a strategy built around long-term partnership and early conviction with the best and brightest builders in the region.
Announcing SCV Portfolio Company #7: Participation in a Newly Minted Unicorn (Name TBA)
As part of their expanded thesis, Santa Cruz Ventures recently participated in a mid-stage financing round cementing their seventh portfolio company, a transaction that formally minted the company as a unicorn ($1B+ valuation) through the valuation established in the round.
The company’s name and additional details will be publicly announced at a later date, following a forthcoming announcement led by the round’s lead investor. The financing was meaningfully oversubscribed, drawing interest from a number of highly prestigious global investment firms. Despite this demand, the company elected to include a limited number of closely aligned partners, enabling participation from Santa Cruz Ventures alongside significantly larger funds—many of which were ultimately denied allocation. The business is widely viewed as having long-term potential in reaching a $100B+ valuation over the next ten years; especially considering their position in a transformation industry in which they reside.
Notably, this investment marks the first unicorn to emerge from the Central Coast region since Looker was acquired in 2020 by Google. This underscores the increasing scale, sophistication, and competitiveness of companies being built locally. Many are hot on their heels and already part of SCV's portfolio.
Announcing Portfolio Company #8: AIO Raises $17M Series A
Santa Cruz Ventures also announced its investment in the $17M Series A round of financing of AIO, marking the firm’s eighth portfolio company.
AIO was originally launched in Capitola by a local business owner and piloted the company’s product in local restaurants before expanding throughout the broader Bay Area. The platform addresses critical operational challenges within the hospitality and food-service sector, delivering modern, data-driven tools designed to improve efficiency, visibility, and unit-level economics. They have developed an AI-enabled, all-in-one operating system for restaurants - a 1st of it's kind.
Early traction, creative rebuilding of legacy tech, and disciplined execution attracted backing from experienced Silicon Valley operators and culminated in a Series A syndicate composed of world-class angels and venture capital firms. Collectively, members of the syndicate have been involved in some of the most consequential technology investments of the past decade, including companies such as Toast, Anthropic, OpenAI, GitHub, Airbnb, OpenTable, Zappos, Spotify, Robinhood, Uber, and others. Santa Cruz Ventures is a proud co-investor alongside them. AIO’s trajectory is yet another quiet, strong example of how locally launched companies can scale into category-defining platforms while remaining closely connected to the communities where they began.
Inaugural Fund Momentum at Santa Cruz Ventures
Alongside this strategic expansion and recent portfolio momentum, Santa Cruz Ventures shared that its inaugural fund is in the final stages of completion. With a community of several dozen local investors aligned around supporting the next generation of Central Coast innovation, the firm is now focused on executing across its portfolio and continuing to build long-term partnerships throughout the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem. Looking ahead, Santa Cruz Ventures will continue pursuing its strategy of supporting approximately 30 high-potential local investment opportunities over the coming years, reinforcing its position as a leading source of local capital for the Central Coast.