VC fund profile · evidence-aware directory data
Ascend stages, portfolio and investment profile
Seattle pre-seed venture firm founded in 2019 by Kirby Winfield, focused on Pacific Northwest founders building vertical AI agents, Gen AI infrastructure, and AI applied to physical industries. Fund I deployed from a $15M vehicle (2019); Fund II closed at $25M in May 2023. Typical first checks run $250K–$750K with $500K as a common sweet spot. Ascend positions itself as the most active pre-seed investor in the region.
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Stage-based planning range
$100K–$1M
This is a planning range inferred from stage coverage, not a firm-disclosed check size.
Methodology: Stage bucket inferred from the rounds a fund leads or invests in.
No firm-specific check-size disclosure is recorded.
Investment stages
Leads: Pre-Seed
Participates: Pre-Seed, Seed
Sector focus
ai-ml · enterprise-saas · robotics · defense-tech
Geography
Seattle, WA
Founded 2019
Fund size / AUM
Not recorded
A separate fund-size evidence record is not yet available.
Portfolio in our directory
2
Linked startup profiles
Recent tracked investment
Not recorded
No dated round explicitly links this fund.
Rounds they lead
Rounds they invest
Last verified: Not recorded. Check-size evidence is labeled by basis so planning estimates are not presented as firm disclosures.
Portfolio companies we track
Startups in our directory that list Ascend as an investor (2 total).
Editorial note: AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.