Innovation Endeavors is the early-stage venture firm co-founded in 2010 by Eric Schmidt and Dror Berman (VentureBeat; official site). Its mandate is unusually explicit: partner with founders "chasing the edge of what's possible across AI, computing infrastructure, sensing, electrification, robotics, and biology" — investing in technical breakthroughs at the intersection of science and technology that re-architect industries "too complex, too physical, or too slow to change" (innovationendeavors.com; Berman profile page).
The thesis is that the next great companies will be built by scientists and engineers, not just software product managers. The firm looks for technical breakthroughs with the potential to restructure physical industries — energy, manufacturing, biology, computation — where the barrier is scientific difficulty rather than distribution. It is deep-tech investing with a distinctly ambitious, almost research-lab sensibility.
On sector and stage, the firm covers AI and intelligent software, computing infrastructure, sensing, electrification, robotics, biology, engineering health, climate and the physical economy. It invests at seed and Series A, often leading or co-leading, with typical first cheques of $1–15 million (innovationendeavors.com; TechCrunch Fund V coverage).
The latest fund is Fund V, closed at $630 million in January 2024 and announced by the firm and covered by TechCrunch. Total firm assets under management were not publicly disclosed. The firm merged with Marker LLC in 2017 (VentureBeat), consolidating its early-stage platform.
The portfolio shows the science-first mandate working at scale. The official homepage features Atom Computing, Inception Labs, Planet, AlphaSense, Eikon Therapeutics and Uber. TechCrunch's Fund V coverage confirms past investments including SoFi, Uber, Astra, Slice and Zymergen, with recent leads in companies such as Machina Labs and BioLoomics — quantum computing, AI drug discovery and advanced manufacturing among them.
Leadership reflects the technical ambition. Eric Schmidt, Dror Berman, Scott Brady and Rick Scanlon are all founding partners (official team pages). The roster also includes Jørgen Vig Knudstorp — partner and executive advisor, and the former CEO of LEGO — alongside partners Harpinder (Harpi) Singh, Davis Treybig, Nick Olsen and Kenneth Auchenberg, with Rebecca Lucia as CFO and operating partner. It is a partnership built to diligence science, not just spreadsheets.
The firm runs several founder-facing initiatives. Its "Research Driven Ideation" framework systematises how the team generates theses from scientific research; the dy/dx initiative with Stanford University connects the firm to frontier academic research; and Curiosity Camp convenes founders (all per Berman's official Fund V announcement on Medium). These are thesis-generation and community initiatives rather than application-based accelerators — the front door is the investment team, not a programme application.
No portfolio credit or perks programme was verified, and no India investments or office were verified — founders should treat the firm as US-anchored. For technical founders, the fit is clear: Innovation Endeavors is built for teams whose advantage is a scientific or engineering breakthrough, who need an investor that can evaluate the science and stay through long development cycles.
Why it matters for founders
Innovation Endeavors is where scientific ambition meets venture scale. If your breakthrough is technical — a new material, a quantum advance, a biological platform — lead with the science and the industry it re-architects. Generalist VCs will ask about CAC; this firm will ask about the physics. Know which conversation you want before you pitch.