Strange Ventures

Strange Ventures is a San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed-stage venture capital firm founded in 2024 by Tara Tan, who serves as Founder and Managing Partner. Tara was previously a General Partner at IDEO Ventures, where she co-founded IDEO CoLab Ventures, a top-decile early-stage fund, bringing a strong human-centric design background to investing. Strange Ventures is a first-check fund that backs deeply technical inventor-founders building the next frontier of computing, and it is willing to lead rounds. Its thesis centers on AI infrastructure, deep software, developer tools, and the intersection of technology with human creativity, including generative AI and multimodal systems. The firm takes a design-driven approach, positioning itself as the first creative and capital partner to bold founders whose ideas often seem 'strange' at the outset but carry transformative potential. It runs distinctive support programs such as Blueprint, which pairs design experts with portfolio companies; the Strange 100, a global network of creative leaders in AI and tech; and the Strange Research Fellowship. Notable early portfolio companies include Archetype AI, which builds foundation models for physical AI; VideoDB, video infrastructure for AI applications; and BLNG, a creative-tools company. The firm invests across pre-seed, seed and seed-plus rounds, with total fund size and specific check sizes not publicly disclosed. By blending design thinking with first-check conviction, Strange Ventures aims to be the earliest partner to technical founders inventing new categories of computing.