Ali Partovi

CEO & Founder

Investor Bay Area

Background

Co-founded LinkExchange (sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998)
Co-founded iLike (social music, sold to MySpace)
Co-founded Code.org with brother Hadi — largest CS education nonprofit, reaching tens of millions of students
Early angel in Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, Zappos
Founded Neo in 2017 with a talent-first thesis: identifying exceptional technical talent before they incorporate

Companies

Investment Focus

Notable Investments

Cursor (AI coding editor, ~$10B valuation — Neo was first investor)
Bluesky (decentralized social, $700M valuation — first institutional investor)
Cognition (AI coding assistant, $4B valuation)
Pika Labs (AI text-to-video, ~$700M valuation)
Chai Discovery (foundation models for science)
Kalshi (prediction markets)
Pre-Neo angel: Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, Zappos

AI Agent Relevance

Portfolio shows clear AI-native thesis: Cursor, Cognition, Pika, Chai Discovery
Talent-first approach means they invest in strong technical founders building foundational technology
Neo community includes prominent AI leaders; backers include Sam Altman and Satya Nadella
Ideal approach is through Neo Residency or community path
$750K uncapped SAFEs via Residency make it a fit for early-stage AI infrastructure
Best via Neo ecosystem / residency / warm path — not cold outreach

Colleagues · 3

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