Mayfield Fund

Tommy Davis and Wally Davis, who were unrelated, founded Mayfield. The firm took its name from the town of Mayfield, later incorporated into Palo Alto. Early investments included Atari, Tandem and Genentech. Its approach emphasized early partnerships with founders and support from multiple partners.⁠[1]

Mayfield traces its work with founders at the idea stage to a 1984 collaboration with John Hennessy. Later collaborations involved founders of Poshmark, Nuvia, CloudGenix, Portworx, Elastica, Securiti and Mammoth Biosciences, forming part of the experience behind its AI Garage initiative.⁠[2]

According to Mayfield’s 50th-anniversary history, the firm’s partners established the Mayfield Fund Foundation in the 1990s to support universities, hospitals and other nonprofits. They also endowed the Mayfield Fellows entrepreneurship program at StanfordStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and later at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

Mayfield led CrunchbaseCrunchbaseCrunchbase is a private-company data and intelligence platform headquartered in San Francisco. It launched in 2007 as TechCrunch’s startup database, and its own company profile lists Michael Arrington as founder. It passed to AOL with TechCrunch in 2010 and was spun out of AOL/Verizon in 2015 with backing from Emergence Capital, with Jager McConnell as CEO; it has since raised more than $100 million and launched Pro, Enterprise, API and Crunchbase News products. Since 2025 it has focused on using AI to forecast private companies’ funding, growth and exits, delivering its data through MCP, APIs and third-party AI platforms.Open the full entry’s $18 million Series B, which supported product development and hiring. Crunchbase introduced its Enterprise offering for business teams at the same time. Mayfield partner Rajeev Batra endorsed the company-data platform’s direction in the financing announcement.⁠[3][4]

Mayfield raised a combined $750 million across two funds in March 2020. Its 2023 fund announcement recalled this fundraising as the capital base for the preceding fund cycle.⁠[5]

Mayfield announced the $580 million Mayfield XVII and $375 million Mayfield Select III, totaling $955 million. XVII targeted inception and early customer adoption, primarily seed and Series A. Select III, also called Mayfield Spring, supported follow-on rounds in existing portfolio companies and new investments outside the portfolio, primarily at Series B.⁠[6]

Mayfield introduced the $250 million AI Start, describing it as its first dedicated seed investment vehicle, and brought in Vijay Reddy as its dedicated partner. The announcement stated that AI Start would draw on existing funds and the new capital pool announced in May, supporting AI founders from the inception stage.⁠[7]

Mayfield announced the $100 million AI Garage initiative for ideation-stage founders building AI Teammates. The program required no equity at induction, provided compensation during idea exploration and offered up to $5 million in funding per founding team, alongside an investor partnership, customer validation, talent matching and positioning support.⁠[2]

Mayfield announced Aditya Singh’s appointment as a partner. He would invest from its early-stage venture fund across AI hardware and software infrastructure, cybersecurity and physical AI, bringing experience in technology product management and early-stage investing.⁠[8]

Mayfield reported that optical-interconnect company Lumilens emerged from stealth with $900 million raised and a $5.5 billion valuation. It said it had led the seed round in 2024 and participated in every subsequent round, linking the investment to connectivity needs in AI data centers.⁠[9]

Mayfield announced that early portfolio company Alif Semiconductor had been acquired by Analog Devices for more than $1.6 billion. In his retrospective, Navin Chaddha linked the investment to low-power computing, low latency and chip integration for edge AI.⁠[10]

Warp SciencesWarp SciencesWarp Sciences is a chemistry contract research organization based in South San Francisco, California. It combines chemists, AI and laboratory robotics to make research compounds for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, initially focusing on lead optimization for preclinical small-molecule programs.Open the full entry launched with a $215 million Series A led by LightspeedLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry, with Mayfield among the participants. Mayfield described the company as combining chemists, AI and robotics to make and test molecules for biotechnology and pharmaceutical businesses.⁠[11][12]

As of November 2026, Mayfield is led by Managing Partner Navin Chaddha. Its team includes Rajeev Batra, Matt Carbonara, Tejas Maniar, Sri Pangulur, Ursheet Parikh, Vijay Reddy, Patrick Salyer and Aditya Singh. The Value Add Program supports initial company setup, recruiting, product-market discovery, positioning, early customer access and follow-on investor introductions.⁠[12][13][14]

Mayfield is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Its privacy statement explains that Mayfield comprises multiple funds and other entities with separate legal identities. Mayfield Fund, L.L.C. is a back-office and administrative service entity within that group and operates the website.⁠[12][15]