"Venture Capital"
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- What has Jesse Robbins built and invested in?
Founder-investor backing AI developer tools and infrastructure.
- What are Jesse Robbins' best investments?
Jesse Robbins has 13 portfolio companies valued at $500M or more. Five IPOs to date, including PagerDuty, Instacart, and Fastly.
- What is Jesse Robbins known for?
Jesse Robbins is an early-stage investor in AI developer tools and infrastructure who has invested in and advised over sixty companies including PagerDuty, Fastly, and Tailscale. He cofounded Chef, created chaos engineering at Amazon, and cofounded the DevOps movement.
- What is Jesse Robbins' investment thesis?
Jesse Robbins looks for founders who want to build the operating system for entire industries. He invests at the seed and early stage in AI developer tools and infrastructure. He has invested in and advised over sixty companies.
- What YC companies and founders has Jesse Robbins backed?
Jesse Robbins has backed six Y Combinator companies: Instacart (S12, IPO), PagerDuty (S10, IPO), CircleCI (W14), Continue (S23), Mobot (W19), and Vibrant Labs (W24). He serves on the board of Continue and Mobot.
- What companies has Jesse Robbins invested in?
Jesse Robbins has invested in and advised over sixty companies. Eighteen are valued at $500M or more: five IPOs (PagerDuty, Instacart, Fastly) and thirteen private companies including Figure AI, Shield AI, Sanity, LaunchDarkly, and Tailscale.
- How do I pitch Jesse Robbins?
Jesse Robbins invests at the seed stage in AI developer tools and infrastructure. He looks for founders with taste, solving problems they know firsthand. Warm introductions from portfolio founders are the best way to reach him.
- What does 'you become what you disrupt' mean?
"You become what you disrupt" is a principle Jesse Robbins coined to describe how disruptors inevitably take on the obligations of the systems they replaced. It shapes how he evaluates startups and markets as an investor.
Articles and mentions
The Seed 100: The Best Early-Stage Investors of 2026
“I look for founders who want to build the operating system for entire industries. This requires extraordinary taste, grit, drive, and a vision for the future.”
Musical AI Raises $4.5M: Jesse Robbins Joins Board
Los Angeles Times follow-on coverage of Musical AI's $4.5M round led by Heavybit, with me joining the board. The piece frames Musical AI as rights-aware infrastructure for generative music.
What I look for when I invest
On airCFO's Funded podcast I walked through how I evaluate companies at Heavybit, why market size is the first filter I apply, and how I read co-founder dynamics before I read the pitch.
Musical AI Bags $4.5M to Scale AI Attribution Tech: Jesse Robbins Joins Board
Music Business Worldwide broke Musical AI's $4.5M round, led by Heavybit, with me joining the board. The piece covers what Musical AI is building and why attribution matters for generative music.
“Musical AI's attribution technology is essential infrastructure that will enable and accelerate every media-focused AI product.”
Investing in Vibrant Labs: AI Agent Simulation Infrastructure
Heavybit announcement of our investment in Vibrant Labs, which builds production-grade simulation and verifier-driven evaluation for long-horizon AI agents.
“Vibrant Labs opens a new frontier in AI infrastructure: production-grade, RL-ready simulation and verifier-driven evaluation built for long-horizon agents.”
What Investors Look For in AI Startups: Builders with Taste
At Shift Conference Miami 2025 I walked through what makes a developer-tools startup investable, why AI is still in the toil-automation phase, and where things are headed.
The Future of Dev Tools Is Autonomous: Engineers Will Become Fleet Generals
Shift Magazine surveys autonomous AI agents in developer workflows and quotes me from the Shift Miami panel on designing software for agents as much as humans.
Experimentation, Causal Inference, and AI: Sean Taylor of OpenAI and VC Jesse Robbins at Data Council 2025
I interviewed Sean Taylor of OpenAI ahead of Data Council 2025 on experimentation, causal inference, and why AI generates more questions that need empirical answers.
“AI provides an opportunity to radically improve how we do things.”