Merian Ventures

Merian Ventures is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm founded in 2015 that focuses on finding, funding, and scaling women-founded and co-founded companies in cybersecurity, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and consumer-facing technologies. Founder and Managing Partner Alexsis de Raadt St James holds an MS from MIT and an MBA from Erasmus University. Venture Partner Priya Guha MBE is a former career diplomat who served as British Consul General to San Francisco and holds positions as a non-executive director at UKRI and member of the InnovateUK Council. The team of six includes two partners. The firm invests at Seed and Series A stages with deal sizes typically between $1 million and $5 million, targeting founding teams in the United States and United Kingdom across AI, cybersecurity, blockchain, SaaS, and software. Across 12 investments, the portfolio includes Honeycomb.io (observability platform), Provenance (supply chain transparency), AiSport (most recent investment, August 2023), Alfa (business software), and Aiwyn (financial software). One exit has been recorded: ImpactVision, acquired in February 2020. No investments have been made in 2024 or 2025, suggesting the fund may be between deployment cycles. Merian Ventures champions diversity in tech through a dedicated focus on female founders building companies at the frontier of STEM-related deep technology. The firm's transatlantic reach — combining the San Francisco technology ecosystem with a Venture Partner who brings deep UK government and innovation policy networks — gives portfolio companies access to regulatory intelligence and public sector pathways that are particularly relevant for cybersecurity and AI companies operating in regulated markets.