BAG Ventures Closes $11.3M Fund to Invest in Enterprise AI Startups

BAG Ventures has closed its first fund at $11.3 million to invest in early-stage companies building artificial intelligence technology for enterprise customers.

Founded by Bonita Stewart and Jackson Georges Jr., the firm has assembled 150 limited partners and made 10 investments through Fund I across enterprise AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, vertical applications and agentic workflows.

The fund represents the next stage of an investing network Stewart and Georges began developing years earlier through BAG Collective.

From BAG Collective to BAG Ventures

BAG Collective has grown into a community of more than 450 technology operators who invest together while contributing industry experience and professional networks to founders.

Stewart and Georges began investing together before establishing BAG Ventures. Between 2021 and 2023, they co-invested in 16 deals. Those earlier investments, separate from the current Fund I portfolio, included Syrup Tech, which was later acquired by Anaplan, and LastMile AI, which was acquired by Meta.

The two first crossed paths at Google and later participated together in the inaugural cohort of Berkeley's Black Venture Institute.

Stewart spent 18 years at Google, where she helped build the company's automotive vertical before leading large customer sales across automotive, travel, finance and media. She was named a vice president in 2012 and later served as a Board Partner for Gradient Ventures, Google's AI-focused seed fund.

Georges worked in sales at Google before joining CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund, where he became a partner and worked with growth-stage companies.

Their work together eventually expanded from co-investing and BAG Collective into BAG Ventures.

Investing Across Enterprise AI

BAG Ventures invests at the pre-seed and seed stages and organizes its thesis around three areas it calls Scale, Secure and Deliver.

Scale covers AI data infrastructure, next-generation compute, and physical and edge AI.

Secure includes AI-native security as well as infrastructure and governance for AI agents.

Deliver focuses on vertical service-as-software companies using AI to produce specific business outcomes.

Fund I has made 10 investments to date: Nomadic AI, SXD, Superface, BizTrip AI, Galvant, Kuddo Health, Papr.ai, Defendermate, Cactus Compute and Lanai. BAG Ventures has separately participated in SPV investments in Sophia Space and Cohere.

The portfolio spans different layers of the firm's thesis. Lanai focuses on enterprise AI governance and security, while Defendermate applies AI to cybersecurity. Cactus Compute is developing an open-source framework for running AI inference on smartphones, wearables and other low-power devices. BizTrip AI uses agentic AI for corporate travel, while SXD applies AI to apparel design and manufacturing.

An Operator Network Behind the Fund

BAG Ventures describes its support for founders through three areas: Capability, Capital and Community.

Capability includes access to expertise across go-to-market strategy, product, talent and technical diligence. Capital includes relationships with venture firms that can participate in future funding rounds. Community encompasses peer connections, events and access to BAG's broader network.

That network is also reflected in Fund I's investor base.

Google anchors the fund, alongside backers including Loop Capital, John Rogers, Jeff Dean and Ken Chenault. BAG Ventures says 85% of its limited partners hold senior leadership positions, while more than a quarter have technical or engineering backgrounds at organizations including Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Snowflake, General Motors and Vanguard.

Combined with the wider BAG Collective, the firm says more than 600 operators are within reach of its portfolio founders.

BAG Ventures has also built a system for identifying where those relationships can be useful. Each portfolio company has what the firm describes as a living profile within its ecosystem, tracking what the company needs, introductions already made and remaining gaps.

For BAG Ventures, the operator network is intended to be more than a source of capital. The firm tracks the introductions and expertise each portfolio company needs, then draws on its investors and broader community to help founders reach potential customers, partners and future backers.