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Leigh Marie Braswell

Leigh Marie Braswell is a venture capitalist and partner at Kleiner Perkins who invests mainly in infrastructure and artificial intelligence application startups; she was an early engineer and the first product manager at Scale AI and began her investing career at Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry.

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Key facts

Before 2023Scale AI and Founders Fund

After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she joined the early team of Scale API (later renamed Scale AI) as one of its first ten employees, working first as a software engineer and then as the company’s first product manager, leading 3D annotation products for autonomous vehicle, robotics and AR/VR customers.⁠[1][2][3]

Before that, she had worked in trading at Jane Street and in machine learning at Google, which the Datacast show notes describe as internships; she also interned at Blend and made angel investments.⁠[2][1]

She then began her investing career at Founders Fund; in a February 2022 Datacast podcast interview, she discussed her reasons for joining Founders Fund and what playing poker had taught her for startup and venture work.⁠[3][1]

May 24, 2023Joining Kleiner Perkins as a Partner

Kleiner Perkins announced on May 24, 2023, that she was joining as a partner, saying she would focus on startups in artificial intelligence; the announcement also noted she had already worked with early-stage AI companies including Exafunction, Arena AI and Grit.⁠[2]

As of October 2026: Investment Focus and Board Seats

According to the Kleiner Perkins website, she backs founders building infrastructure and AI applications, holds board seats at Avoca and Poetic, has also backed Nooks, Applied Compute and Engram, and her past investments include Windsurf, Neon and Chronosphere.⁠[3]

Education

She is originally from Alabama and took part in math olympiads in her school years; in PRIMES, the MIT mathematics department’s research program for high school students, she worked on “The Cookie Monster Problem” under the mentorship of Tanya Khovanova and co-wrote a paper.⁠[3][2][4]

She studied mathematics with computer science as an undergraduate at MIT, from which she graduated.⁠[1][3]

Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts

Scale AI: Official website: https://scale.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

Founders Fund: Official website: https://foundersfund.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

Kleiner Perkins: Official website: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

X: Public account: https://x.com/LM_Braswell (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leigh-marie-braswell (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

Sources

  1. Datacast (opens in a new window)
  2. Welcoming Leigh Marie Braswell (opens in a new window)
  3. Leigh Marie Braswell (opens in a new window)
  4. PRIMES: Leigh Marie Braswell's Story (opens in a new window)