Umesh Padval

Managing Partner @ Seligman Ventures | Investor, Entrepreneur & Board member bringing deep tech expertise, operating experience, and a large CXO network to portfolio companies.

📍 San Francisco Bay Area, United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 40 investments📅 27 years investing🗓 Last invested Apr 2026
VC🌍 United States20+ investmentsInvested this year
40
Total investments
9
Early stage
7
Mid stage
4
Late stage
27y
Years active

Portfolio

26 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Board Member and Investor
Apr 2026
Eliyans mission is to revolutionize chiplet connectivity technologies by challenging the status quo to unleash the ultimate performance of smart systems of the future.
Investor
Mar 2026
Upscale ai delivers scalable, standards-based open AI backend networks designed to meet the speed, scale, and control that AI workloads require.
Investor
Feb 2026
Welcome to SambaNova: Revolutionizing AI Capacity At SambaNova, were empowering developers, enterprises, governments, and data centers to unlock their full AI potential. Our full-stack infrastructure, from chips to models, enables lightning-fast performance, low power consumption, and high-efficiency computing. Our Mission To give every developer, enterprise, government and data center absolute sovereignty over their own data, models and AI infrastructure – to future-proof the AI workloads that will power and scale tomorrow. Our Technology We give our customers the optionality to experience SambaNova through the cloud or on-premise. Samba Cloud delivers the fastest inferences on the largest open source models like Llama 4 and DeepSeek. Developers can get started building in minutes with our OpenAI compatible APIs. All customers start on the developer tier and when they need more capacity can scale into our enterprise tier. SambaStack is our on-premise offering which includes the system, the platform, and foundation models. These components combine into a powerful technology stack that delivers unparalleled performance, ease of use, accuracy, data privacy, and the ability to power every use case across the worlds largest organizations. SambaManaged is a modular and ready-to-deploy AI cloud designed to deliver unmatched efficiency for data centers and cloud service providers. This solution allows organizations to quickly deploy advanced AI inference services—without the need for costly infrastructure upgrades or specialized expertise—in as little as 90 days. At the heart of SambaNova innovation is the Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU). Purpose built for AI workloads, the RDU takes advantage of a dataflow architecture and a three-tiered memory design. The three tiers of memory enable the platform to run hundreds of models on a single node and to switch between them in microseconds. In 2023, SambaNova released its 4th generation RDU chip, the SN40L.
Board Oberver and Investor
Feb 2026
Lumilens addresses the red hot market for AI data center infrastructure by designing, manufacturing and selling photonic interconnect solutions. We design and use custom robotics + AI in our factories to more efficiently build our products. Lumilens is backed by top-tier venture capital investors including Mayfield and Spark Capital.
Investor
Jan 2026
modiqo builds rote — agent tool infrastructure that turns every successful run into reusable, replayable memory. Todays AI agents reinvent the path every time. They re-derive the same API calls, re-explore the same workflows, and pay tokens to rediscover what already worked yesterday. The frameworks above the model have no incentive to fix this — tokens spent on rediscovery are still tokens billed. rote changes the default. It adapts any API into a callable surface, traces every tool call and outcome as the agent works, and crystallizes successful runs into named, deterministic flows. The next time the same problem shows up, the agent recalls the flow instead of re-solving it. Same input, same output, a fraction of the tokens. Crystallized flows publish to a shared hub, so one engineers solution becomes the teams default — and the rediscovery tax gets paid once, not on every request. Built for the engineers who own whether the agent works tomorrow the way it worked today. Platform engineers, forward-deployed engineers, and teams running agents in production.
Board Member
Jan 2026
Cognichip is developing the world’s first Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®) to reimagine chip design. Founded by experts from Amazon, Google, Apple, Aquantia, Synopsys, and KLA, the company tackles high cost and inaccessibility in chip development, enabling hardware to evolve as quickly as AI software innovation. Backed by $33 million in seed funding from Mayfield, Lux Capital, FPV, and Candou Ventures, Cognichip’s ACI® features a first-of-its-kind physics-informed foundation model, purposely built for semiconductors. ACI® accelerates innovation and broadens access to semiconductor technology by making it easier, more affordable, and accessible to a broader range of innovators.
Investor and Board Member
Jul 2024
Relyance AI provides industry-best visibility and coverage, delivering the most comprehensive understanding of data processing across your entire digital ecosystem. We offer an AI-native platform that simplifies data privacy, data security, and AI governance. Powered by our advanced intelligence engine, Trust iQ, our platform seamlessly integrates Global Privacy Automation, Data Security Posture Management, and AI Governance capabilities into a single intuitive interface.
Board Member and Investor
Mar 2024
At Exaforce, we are on a mission to 10x the productivity and efficacy of security and operations (SOC) teams using our transformative multi-model AI engine. Our Agentic SOC Platform combines AI agents (“Exabots”) with advanced data exploration to deliver real-time insights, proactive detection and response, in-depth investigations, and automated workflows. Backed by Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, Thomvest Ventures, Touring Capital, and others, Exaforce helps SOC teams respond to threats and breaches faster, with higher precision, greater consistency, and at lower total costs—redefining how SOC teams function.
Investor
Oct 2023
StackGen generates Infrastructure from Code automatically based on application code with golden standards applied. StackGen removes software development lifecycle bottlenecks, minimizes liabilities and eliminates cognitive overload.
Investor
May 2023
Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation models and end-to-end AI products designed to solve real-world business problems. We partner closely with companies to deliver seamless integration, full customization, and easy-to-use solutions for their workforce and customers. Our all-in-one platform offers enterprises the highest levels of data security, privacy and optionality to deploy across all major cloud providers, private cloud environments, or on-premises. HQ: 171 John Street, 2nd Floor, Toronto, ON M5T 1X3
Board Member
Feb 2022
Isovalent is the company founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF. Isovalent builds open-source software and enterprise solutions solving networking, security, and observability needs for modern cloud native infrastructure. The flagship technology Cilium is the choice of leading global organizations including Adobe, AWS, Capital One, Datadog, GitLab, Google, and many more. As of April 12, 2024, Isovalent is part of Cisco.
Investor
Oct 2021
See Exactly What Attackers See. Take full control over your attack surface by uncovering and eliminating critical security risks – the ones you didnt know existed. Our botnet and discovery engine use graph data modeling to map and classify the assets across your attack surface.
Investor
Jan 2021
Harness is a rapidly growing startup that is disrupting the software delivery market. The Harness Software Delivery Platform includes product modules for every aspect of software delivery, including: Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Feature Flags, Cloud Cost Management, Service Reliability Management, Security Testing Orchestration, Chaos Engineering, Software Engineering Insights, Continuous Error Tracking, Code Repository, Internal Developer Portal, Software Supply Chain Assurance, Infrastructure as Code Management and AI/ML infused throughout with AI Development Assistant (AIDA). The platform is designed to help companies accelerate their cloud initiatives as well as their adoption of containers and orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Amazon ECS and make software delivery easier, giving devs their nights and weekends back.
Investor and Board member
Aug 2019
Bolster is an AI-powered cybersecurity company helping the world’s leading brands protect their customers from phishing, fraud, and digital impersonation. With offices in Santa Clara, California, and Noida, India, we combine deep learning and automation to detect, analyze, and take down threats in real time—across web, social media, dark web, and app stores. Our platform is trusted by startups and many Fortune 500 companies alike to reduce risk, protect revenue, and defend brand reputation at scale.
Show all 26 investments ↓
Experience · 44 entries
All (44)
Investments (40)
Board (25)
2026
Board Member and Investor
Apr 2026
Eliyans mission is to revolutionize chiplet connectivity technologies by challenging the status quo to unleash the ultimate performance of smart systems of the future.
Investor
Mar 2026
Upscale ai delivers scalable, standards-based open AI backend networks designed to meet the speed, scale, and control that AI workloads require.
Investor
Feb 2026
Welcome to SambaNova: Revolutionizing AI Capacity At SambaNova, were empowering developers, enterprises, governments, and data centers to unlock their full AI potential. Our full-stack infrastructure, from chips to models, enables lightning-fast performance, low power consumption, and high-efficiency computing. Our Mission To give every developer, enterprise, government and data center absolute sovereignty over their own data, models and AI infrastructure – to future-proof the AI workloads that will power and scale tomorrow. Our Technology We give our customers the optionality to experience SambaNova through the cloud or on-premise. Samba Cloud delivers the fastest inferences on the largest open source models like Llama 4 and DeepSeek. Developers can get started building in minutes with our OpenAI compatible APIs. All customers start on the developer tier and when they need more capacity can scale into our enterprise tier. SambaStack is our on-premise offering which includes the system, the platform, and foundation models. These components combine into a powerful technology stack that delivers unparalleled performance, ease of use, accuracy, data privacy, and the ability to power every use case across the worlds largest organizations. SambaManaged is a modular and ready-to-deploy AI cloud designed to deliver unmatched efficiency for data centers and cloud service providers. This solution allows organizations to quickly deploy advanced AI inference services—without the need for costly infrastructure upgrades or specialized expertise—in as little as 90 days. At the heart of SambaNova innovation is the Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU). Purpose built for AI workloads, the RDU takes advantage of a dataflow architecture and a three-tiered memory design. The three tiers of memory enable the platform to run hundreds of models on a single node and to switch between them in microseconds. In 2023, SambaNova released its 4th generation RDU chip, the SN40L.
Board Oberver and Investor
Feb 2026
Lumilens addresses the red hot market for AI data center infrastructure by designing, manufacturing and selling photonic interconnect solutions. We design and use custom robotics + AI in our factories to more efficiently build our products. Lumilens is backed by top-tier venture capital investors including Mayfield and Spark Capital.
Investor
Jan 2026
modiqo builds rote — agent tool infrastructure that turns every successful run into reusable, replayable memory. Todays AI agents reinvent the path every time. They re-derive the same API calls, re-explore the same workflows, and pay tokens to rediscover what already worked yesterday. The frameworks above the model have no incentive to fix this — tokens spent on rediscovery are still tokens billed. rote changes the default. It adapts any API into a callable surface, traces every tool call and outcome as the agent works, and crystallizes successful runs into named, deterministic flows. The next time the same problem shows up, the agent recalls the flow instead of re-solving it. Same input, same output, a fraction of the tokens. Crystallized flows publish to a shared hub, so one engineers solution becomes the teams default — and the rediscovery tax gets paid once, not on every request. Built for the engineers who own whether the agent works tomorrow the way it worked today. Platform engineers, forward-deployed engineers, and teams running agents in production.
Show all 44 entries ↓
Investment activity
1999–2026 · 40 investments
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