Three longtime venture capitalists who have backed some of the most important technology companies of the past decade have reunited as partners in Singapore’s $800 billion sovereign wealth fund GIC.
They aim to recreate the magic that led them to make early bets on DoorDash, Uber, Zoom, Coinbase, and Snowflake. And while many of these companies are coming out of the Bay Area, advances in AI mean the next wave of category-defining companies won’t be limited to San Francisco, VCs say.
“A great venture team is like a great band,” said Ethel Chen, one of the partners behind Databacks and Anthropic. “We know when the chemistry is right. We’ve done this before around the world, and now we’re bringing that playbook to founders building at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, and global commerce.”
Jeremy Krantz founded Sentinel Global in 2022 with a $213 million solo fund. He recently brought on board former GIC colleagues Chen Sharma and Karan Sharma, who invested in Anduril, Coinbase, and SpaceX. The firm is intentionally small, senior-led, and built around research and engineering support rather than a large junior investment staff.
“We are a model of a SWAT team,” said Kranz, who was an early investor in DoorDash and Affirm and served on the boards of both companies. “Let’s run a playbook that we know works.”
That’s not to say Kranz will do everything the same way he did during his 17 years at GIC, rising to managing director of the technology group.
Krantz says AI will make companies leaner, and many more companies worth $1 billion will go from raising just $20 million.
“We think AI is one of the black swans that will impact how companies are built,” he said. “My job as a VC is efficiency.”
Sentinel’s investments span enterprise AI, programmable money, and what Kranz calls “connected commerce,” startups that connect the physical world with software and AI.
Krantz said venture capital is too geographically concentrated despite being based in the Bay Area, and the company plans to focus on finding low-quality startups from other regions as well.
“We think the world has been very California-centric, but the pendulum will swing back again,” Krantz said.
Krantz says advances in AI tools, automation and open source models will rapidly reduce the cost and number of employees needed to build meaningful companies, weakening Silicon Valley’s traditional advantages. He says it will happen sooner than most expected, within a year.
“You don’t need to raise a crazy amount of money to start an AI company,” he says. “You don’t need depth of talent either.”
Krantz believes these economic conditions favor founders outside of Silicon Valley, especially in regions where efficiency is always at a premium.
“I love emerging markets because they tend to be astute early on,” he said. “I wouldn’t say Silicon Valley is being shrewd at this point. They’re not thinking about how to manage their spending.”
Sentinel typically makes fewer than 10 investments a year and writes checks ranging from $5 million to $30 million. Kranz said venture capitalists are too obsessed with check size and not focused enough on maintaining significant ownership, a lesson he learned from Michael Moritz, a longtime partner at the storied Sequoia Capital.
“He told me the first thing we need to measure is percentage ownership,” Krantz said.
