Ascend
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.
Typical check size
$100K-$1M (early-stage estimate)
Founded
2019
Headquarters
Seattle, WA
AUM
N/A
Rounds they lead
Pre-Seed
Rounds they invest
Pre-Seed
Seed
Portfolio companies we track
Startups in our directory that list Ascend as an investor (1 total).
Related investment articles
FAQs about Ascend
Stage fit, check size, thesis, and how founders typically approach this firm — based on public sources and our directory.
Seattle, Washington. The firm primarily backs Seattle-area and Pacific Northwest founders at pre-seed.
Pre-seed as the default — often the first institutional check. Ascend may participate in seed rounds for portfolio companies but typically does not lead Series A.
Roughly $250K–$750K, with $500K as a common first check (ascend.vc materials, TechCrunch May 2023).
SaaS 3.0 (vertical AI agents), Gen AI infrastructure, and frontier AI applied to physical-world problems — defense, robotics, and industrial workflows.
$25M, closed May 2023 (TechCrunch). Fund I was a $15M vehicle that began deploying in 2019.
Founding GP Kirby Winfield, with a small team including partner Jen Haller. Winfield has been investor-in-residence at the Allen Institute for AI.
Primarily Pacific Northwest. Ascend publishes regional ecosystem research (e.g., Metro Multiples, Cascadian Dynamism) and expands selectively beyond the immediate metro.
Both back AI-native Seattle teams. Ascend writes smaller first checks at pre-seed; Flying Fish targets larger pre-seed/seed rounds with an ML-operator partnership. Portfolio overlap is common in PNW AI.