Felicis

Felicis
Company typePrivate
IndustryVenture capital
Founded2006
FounderAydin Senkut
HeadquartersMenlo  Park, California
Websitefelicis.com

Felicis is a venture capital firm that invests in start-up technology companies. It was founded in 2006 by Aydin Senkut. The company has offices in Menlo Park, California, San Francisco, California and New York City.[1]

Felicis has invested early in Shopify, Plaid Inc., Canva, CreditKarma, Notion, and Mercor. In 2016, Inc. magazine named Felicis one of the “Top 13 Seed Investors in Silicon Valley”,[2] and in 2025, Forbes included the firm’s founder and managing partner Aydin Senkut on its Midas List of the World’s Best Venture Capital Investors, for the 12th consecutive year.[3]

Background and philosophy

Felicis was established in 2006 by Aydin Senkut, a Turkish-born executive who was the first product manager at Google.[4] The New York Times listed Senkut as one of the Top 20 Venture Capitalists in the world in 2017.[5]

The company has its headquarters in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park in San Mateo County, California. Felicis focuses on early-stage technology investments across sectors including AI, cybersecurity, global resilience, health and biotech.[6] Forbes describes Felicis as a "nimble boutique VC, able to move faster than larger funds".[7] The company has invested in companies in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Estonia, Finland and the Near East.[8]

In 2014, Felicis gained attention by including a clause in its term sheets that pledged not to vote against a founder, effectively aligning its interests with those of the entrepreneur.[9][10][11] By 2014, Felicis, had invested in 50 startups that were either acquired or sold shares in an initial public offering.[12]

In 2018 launched the Founder Pledge, which commits 1% of every first check to founder performance and development, including leadership, coaching and CEO peer groups.[7][13][14] Former Consumer Vice President of OpenAI’s ChatGPT team Peter Deng joined Felicis in 2025.[15]

History

2010s

In 2010, the firm began its transition from a solo venture to an institutional fund, hiring two investors.[16][17] It participated in the $15 million Series A funding round of Shopify, an e‑commerce platform,[18] along with Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and Georgian Partners.[19] It followed up with participating in funding the company’s Series B (2011) and Series C round (2013), along with the others, OMERS Ventures and Insight Venture Partners.[20] Shopify went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015.[21]

In 2013, Felicis was a seed round investor in Plaid, the San Francisco-based fintech company that connects consumer bank accounts to financial apps.[22] In the fall of 2013, Felicis first invested in Adyen, a global payments platform headquartered in the Netherlands,[23] and followed up with participating in its $250 million Series B round in December 2014.[24] In 2013, Felicis also invested in Notion,[6] a productivity and collaboration tool used by businesses and individuals worldwide.[25]

In 2015, Felicis led the Series A funding round of Australian online design platform Canva.[26] As of August 2025, Canva was valued at $42 billion.[27]

2020s

Felicis took part in the Seed, Series A and Series B[28][29] funding rounds for Credit Karma, an Oakland, California based company offering free credit scores and financial tools. In 2020, Credit Karma was acquired by Intuit for $7.1 billion.[30][31]

In 2021, Felicis led the Series A funding into Berlin-based workflow automation platform n8n.[32] In 2022, Felicis led the $80 million Series B funding into Supabase, an open-source backend-as-a-service (BaaS) alternative to Google’s Firebase[33] and were the biggest investor in the $50 million Series C funding into Runway ML, one of the startups behind the deep learning, text-to-image AI model, Stable Diffusion.[34]

In 2024, Felicis led a $21.5 million Series A funding round for Wherobots, a cloud-based geospatial platform. [35]

In 2025, Felicis led the Series B funding round for Mercor, an AI-driven recruiting startup based in San Francisco that automates talent sourcing and hiring for technology companies, and led the Series C funding in Mercor later that year.[36][37] In June 2025, the firm raised their tenth fund, their highest to date at $900 million,[6] bringing its assets under management to over $3.8 billion.[3] Felicis has invested in security technology company Verkada since 2019,[38] and in 2025 was part of the $200 million Series E funding.[39]

In 2025, Forbes included Felicis founder Aydin Senkut on its Midas List of the World’s Best Venture Capital Investors, for the 12th consecutive year.[3] In 2026, Business Insider included Senkut on the AI Power List.[40]

References

  1. ^ Loizos, Connie (2 March 2023). "Felicis funded 50% more deals last year than in 2021, some as prices were still rising — and it says it has no regrets". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  2. ^ Rajaraman, Sunil (27 July 2016). "The Top 13 Seed Stage Investors in Silicon Valley". Inc. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  3. ^ a b c "Dünyanın en iyi risk sermayedarları arasında tek Türk". Forbes (Turkey) (in Turkish). 7 August 2025.
  4. ^ "Two ex-Googlers reunite at venture capital firm". The New York Times. 14 January 2015. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  5. ^ "The Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide". The New York Times. 27 March 2017. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  6. ^ a b c Garfinkle, Allie (16 June 2025). "Exclusive: Felicis has raised $900 million tenth fund". Fortune (via Yahoo Finance). Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  7. ^ a b "Super Yatirimci", Forbes (Turkey) (in Turkish), August 2025
  8. ^ Carreras, Patricia (2016). Lancer sa start-up aux Etats-Unis (in French). Eyrolles. ISBN 9782212080865.
  9. ^ Alden, William (5 August 2014). "Venture Capitalists Coddle Entrepreneurs as Royalty". The New York Times (DealBook). Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  10. ^ "Felicis Ventures raises fund, pledges to always side with founders". Reuters. 5 August 2014. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  11. ^ Cutler, Kim-Mai (5 August 2014). "Felicis Raises New $96 M Fund, Pledges to Always Vote Shares With Founders". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  12. ^ MacMillan, Douglas (5 August 2014). "Felicis Ventures Stocks Up With $96 Million Fund". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  13. ^ Konrad, Alex (10 September 2018). "VC firm pledges 1 percent to founder health". Forbes. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  14. ^ Ramsinghani, Mahendra (10 September 2018). "Investors are waking up to the emotional struggle of startup founders". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  15. ^ Mascarenhas, Natasha. "A Former OpenAI Leader Jumps to Felicis; SoftBank Doubles Down". The Information. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  16. ^ Tam, Pui-Wing; Ante, Spencer E. (16 August 2010). "Super Angels Fly In to Aid Start-Ups". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  17. ^ Loizos, Connie (7 June 2012). "Aydin Senkut's Felicis Ventures Raises 70M; Could Have Closed on $100M". Venture Capital Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  18. ^ Tam, Samantha (13 December 2010). "Shopify Announces $7 Million Series A Funding". Shopify Investor Relations. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  19. ^ MacDonald, Larry (2024). The Shopify Story:How a Startup Rocketed to E-commerce Giant by Empowering Millions of Entrepreneurs. Ecw Press. p. 14. ISBN 9781778522963.
  20. ^ "Shopify Announces $100 Million Funding". Shopify Investor Relations. 13 December 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  21. ^ Quittner, Jeremy (21 May 2015). "Shopify dazzles in first day of public life". Inc. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  22. ^ Ha, Anthony (19 September 2013). "Plaid Raises $2.8 M To Make Banking Data More Developer Friendly". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  23. ^ Chapman, Lizette (6 June 2014). "With $16M Raised, Payments Startup Adyen Looks for Growth". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  24. ^ Chapman, Lizette (16 December 2014). "Payment Startup Adyen Raises $250 Million at $1.5 Billion Valuation". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  25. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (24 October 2024). "Here is Notion's email client". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  26. ^ Perez, Sarah (6 October 2015). "Design Platform Canva Scores $15 Million Series A, Valued At $165 Million". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  27. ^ "Canva Begins Share Sale at $42 Billion Valuation in Road to IPO". The Australian Financial Review. 20 August 2025. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  28. ^ Kincaid, Jason (4 November 2009). "Credit Karma Raises $2.5 Million To Take The Mystery Out Of Credit Scores". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
  29. ^ Perez, Sarah (2 April 2013). "Credit Karma Raises $30 Million Series B, Becomes More Like Mint As It Expands Beyond Credit Monitoring". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  30. ^ Popper, Nathaniel; de la Merced, Michael J. (24 February 2020). "Intuit to Buy Credit Karma". The New York Times (DealBook). Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  31. ^ Chernova, Yuliya (11 March 2020). "Felicis Ventures Raises $510 Million Fund". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  32. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (26 April 2021). "n8n raises $12M for its 'fair code' approach to low-code workflow automation". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  33. ^ "Supabase raises $80M Series B for its open source Firebase alternative". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  34. ^ "Runway Raises $50 Million At $500 Million Valuation As Generative AI Craze Continues". Forbes. 5 December 2022. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  35. ^ Garfinkle, Allie. "Exclusive: Wherobots, cloud-based geospatial data platform, closes $21.5 million Series A". Fortune. Retrieved 2026-01-26.
  36. ^ Chernova, Yuliya (27 January 2025). "AI Recruiting Startup Mercor Rockets to $2 Billion Valuation". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  37. ^ Au-Yeung, Angel (27 October 2025). "The AI Startup Fueling ChatGPT's Expertise Is Now Valued at $10 Billion". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  38. ^ "Verkada raises $80M at $1.6B to be every building's security OS". TechCrunch. 29 January 2020. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  39. ^ Garfinkle, Allie (19 February 2025). "Exclusive: Verkada's $200 million Series E values the company at $4.5 billion". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  40. ^ Mok Aaron (6 January 2026). "AI Power List: Aydin Senkut". Business Insider. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
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