I was joking with some of my AI colleagues the other week that every day in our industry feels like a week. The tech industry has been fast-paced through every new compute revolution – PC, Internet, mobile, social, cloud – but AI is the most rapidly evolving tech cycle yet. For every 24-hour period, there seems to be a new groundbreaking AI model, a major partnership forged and another one dismantled, an industry-shifting acquisition, or another massive multibillion dollar investment. The pace of innovation and change can be dizzying at times as it disrupts and improves virtually all sectors.
At Okeanos, we've been thrilled to play a part in this whirlwind of growth and innovation. We have had an incredible start to the year, with growth across membership and investments far exceeding plan, and many of our 150+ portfolio companies dominating the headlines with impressive partnerships, M&As, product awards and pending IPOs. Even in the face of geopolitical uncertainty, trade war posture and mass government overhaul, our expanded team and scaling membership base has been stronger than ever, delivering our best quarter since our founding back in 2016. Here are a few of the many notable accomplishments from Q1:
• 18 investments closed in Q1, funding $12.5M in many of the hottest names across industry-leading AI, healthtech and robotics companies
• Doubled down on many of our top portfolio companies from 2024, including follow on investments in Groq, Cerebras, FigureAI and Voyager Technologies
• Hosted 3 member events to bring together new and existing members, with the purpose of learning about new investment opportunities, as well as networking, having fun and making new friends.
• Invited industry experts to share their insights on key topics like the space/defense tech industry (thanks Tanveer!) and robotics. Stay tuned for an educational and insightful discussion in this week’s upcoming meeting with one of the top AI experts from the West Coast, Pankaj!
• Welcomed 30+ new Okeanos members from across the country, all with unique and impressive backgrounds and successes.
• As our membership has become more national, we are hyper focused on maintaining our “secret sauce,” which is our incredible community that comes together to provide support and partnership, invest in success together, and make new friends. We couldn’t be more excited about our Q2 member events in Nashville and Great Falls VA.
• A healthier start to the year, with many of our team and members participating in a 75 day fitness and health challenge, in support of The V Foundation for Cancer Research.
And we're just getting started. As we embark on raising our next fund, focused on the next wave of exceptional growth compounders, we look forward to continuing to both support the next wave of high growth leaders, while providing our members with unique access to the most exciting, high growth private disruptors that were previously inaccessible to individual investors.
