Investor Profile: Defined Capital - Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

Defined Capital, known as Defined, is a Vancouver-based firm investing at the frontier of artificial intelligence. For founders asking how to get funding from Defined Capital, this profile explains Defined Capital funding, its thesis-first method, five themes, cheque sizes and how to pitch. It is a focused early-stage fund: it aims to identify, invest in and support founders building at the most critical leverage points underpinning the artificial-intelligence revolution, in its own words.

Thesis: where AI value will structurally concentrate

Defined Capital tracks long-term themes from hypothesis to deployment rather than chasing short-term signals. It invests early, with conviction, ahead of consensus, and follows up on breakout companies. Outbound sourcing is its tip of the spear, with referrals growing in importance.

Sectors and stages

Defined Capital invests at inception and early stage, across North America, in companies shaping the artificial-intelligence frontier. Its five thematics are the Agent Economy, Scalable Infrastructure, Next-Gen Compute, Engineered Science and Physical AI.

Fund size and cheque size

Defined Capital closed Fund I at the end of 2024. Early coverage, summarising BetaKit, reported a $15 million target, with more than a third closed from limited partners including Inovia and Band. The final closed size is not publicly disclosed here. Initial cheques were $100,000 to $500,000, for 25 to 30 startups. Defined Fund II is mentioned as next, but its size is not publicly disclosed.

Notable portfolio

By the end of 2025, Defined Capital reported 29 portfolio companies, after 19 new investments and 4 follow-ons that year, many still in stealth or unannounced. Named companies include Foundation, Mythic, Zyphra, Quandri, Variational AI, Ranger AI, Heritable Ag, Potato and Velou. Quandri later raised a $12 million Series A with Defined Capital participating.

Partners and team

Defined Capital was founded by Mark Trevitt, a former partner at BDC, where he built a track record in artificial-intelligence investing. The team grew to five people during 2025, across research, sourcing, execution and portfolio support. Gautam Chintapenta, an investor at the firm, brings product-marketing experience from Rafay Systems in artificial-intelligence infrastructure, including GPU clouds and distributed inference. The brief describes it as solo-general-partner-led; by 2025 it operated as a small team.

Programs, credits and perks

No structured accelerator or credits programme is published in the sources reviewed here, so none is claimed. Named platform work includes the AI Frontier community, events at NeurIPS and NVIDIA GTC, and the Kauffman Fellows AI Network, which it says grew to more than 400 financial and strategic venture investors. That network tests thematic views and surfaces follow-on capital.

How to apply for funding

Defined Capital invites founders to pitch through its website: its team page says, for founders, tell us what you are building, with a pitch route labelled pitch us. That is the verified public route here. A strong pitch should map to one of its five thematics, explain the leverage point in the artificial-intelligence stack, and show why value will concentrate there as intelligence gets cheaper.