When in mid-2022 Sarah Guo left Greylock to launch her personal AI-focused fund, Conviction Companions, she indicated that she was tagging the phrase “Companions” to the agency’s identify as a result of she would finally carry on different GPs.
Now, greater than two years later, Guo is being joined by Mike Vernal, who was a associate at Sequoia earlier than leaving the storied agency in 2023. Vernal joins as Conviction reveals it simply closed a second fund with $230 million in capital commitments — greater than double the haul of its $101 million debut fund.
It isn’t a shock that Conviction has attracted a heavyweight investor. During the last two years, Guo has constructed up Conviction’s model, changing into among the many better-known AI buyers in Silicon Valley with stakes in corporations like Mistral, Harvey, and Sierra. Guo additionally co-hosts a preferred AI podcast, “No Priors,” with star investor Elad Gil.
In the meantime, Vernal, who spent almost seven years at Sequoia — and the earlier eight years at Fb as a VP of product and engineering — has himself led offers in quite a few high-fliers, together with Notion, Rippling, and Verkada, a safety digicam startup that’s reportedly elevating funding at a $4.5 billion valuation.
