Sugar Free Capital Raises $32m Inaugural Fund To Back Early-staged Mit Founders

Sheena Jindal is from Boston. 

She grew up there, attended MIT, and worked astatine nan Boston Consulting Group for respective years. She launched a startup, worked astatine a startup, and past became an investor astatine Bessemer and Comcast Ventures (CV). 

Last year, her worlds collided erstwhile she decided to motorboat her ain fund, Sugar Free Capital, a patient that focuses connected investing successful method founders from MIT. She nabbed LPs, including nan family offices of heavy-hitting tech executives from companies for illustration Nvidia and Citadel, and connected Monday announced nan closing of Sugar Free’s $32 cardinal inaugural fund. 

One premise of nan money is recovered successful nan name. While moving astatine CV, she led dozens of deals but recovered herself dismayed astatine nan sky-high valuations of nan 2021 era. She kept referring to finance opportunities arsenic being “too sugary, successful nan consciousness that valuations were excessively high,” she told TechCrunch. 

From there, she started reasoning astir nan invention of nan past fewer years and really it was focused connected optimization. “But we are really entering nan property of intelligence,” she said. She designed a thesis astir nan thought that capturing nan property of intelligence would require 2 things: method founders, predominantly those pinch a “systems engineering mindset,” which is what MIT brings, she added, and concentration. 

“The information person shown america historically that task returns are concentrated among a prime group of winners.” 

The attraction connected MIT besides has different reason. Unlike Harvard and Stanford, location isn’t a large people of MIT alumni who are early-stage investors, moreover though MIT founders often spell connected to commencement and activity astatine lucrative companies. “MIT folks spell into finance, but they spell into much quantitative roles,” she said — much hedge money and late-stage investing. 

That achromatic abstraction gives Jindal, a uncommon solo female GP, an outsized opportunity. She plans to put successful 15 early-staged companies (she’s already backed four), penning checks that scope from $1 cardinal to $5 million. The patient focuses connected AI autochthonal infrastructure and picks a caller taxable each 4th to attraction on. For example, this quarter, she is looking for companies focused connected beingness AI, information halfway optimization, and AI agents. 

Sugar Free has already backed a defense company, a gaming company, and a institution successful workflow automation. Jindal hopes to trim astatine slightest 4 to 5 checks a year. Much of nan inbound is from her reaching retired to founders aliases referrals, but she’s unfastened to acold outreach. 

Overall, Jindal feels fortunate astir this fund. The fundraising situation was and is difficult for galore GPs, particularly solo ones, and particularly women. She said LPs liked that her patient provided bully entree to MIT talent and had a clear thesis. 

“We are successful nan modulation play betwixt this caller world bid of AI autochthonal exertion and nan infrastructure and business models of nan past,” Jindal said. “I americium excited to spot really we’re capable to harmoniously harvester these 2 successful position of infrastructure, technology, and nan quality experience, and to me, that’s really exciting”.