Pear VC Raises $333M Fund V to Double Down on Finding Founders Before the Market Does

Pear VC Raises $333M Fund V to Double Down on Finding Founders Before the Market Does

Early backer of DoorDash, Vanta, and Listen Labs now manages more than $1.1 billion and promotes three investors to General Partner

Pear VC today announced the close of its $333 million Fund V, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to more than $1.1 billion. Pear also announced the promotion of Arash Afrakhteh, Ajay Kamat, and Shravan Reddy to General Partner.

As capital concentrates in fewer, larger firms, all competing for companies once they start to break out, Pear will continue to focus where it always has: reaching founders earlier. Since its founding in 2013, Pear has built a system that gives it continuous access to exceptional founder talent, from emerging student builders to experienced operators and entrepreneurs, before their potential is obvious, and often before a company even exists.

Fund V is built to put that approach to work faster. The majority of the fund will be dedicated to new pre-seed and seed investments, deployed over roughly two and a half years, with capital reserved for follow-on investments in breakout companies.

“Our ambition is to be the best in the world at one thing: finding extraordinary founders first, before they become obvious to the rest of the market, and helping them build extraordinary companies from zero,” said Pejman Nozad, Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC. “Fund V gives us the right amount of capital to keep doing that with focus, discipline, and the same early-stage conviction that defines Pear.”

An engine for founder discovery

Pear meets thousands of founders and builders each year through its founder programs and events, technical communities, and sourcing infrastructure. PearX, the firm’s flagship program for pre-seed founders, runs twice a year and accepts fewer than 1% of applicants. More than 6,000 startups applied to the Summer 2026 cohort alone.

This model enables the firm to meet exceptional founders while their companies are still being formed. Pear investors then work closely with those founders to increase their chances of success. About 80% of PearX companies go on to raise institutional seed rounds, in some cases at valuations up to 10 times Pear’s entry price.

“Capital is becoming commoditized,” said Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner at Pear. “Access is not. AI now lets anyone build what once took dozens of engineers. We believe the firms closest to founders at the earliest stages, not just to the financing rounds that follow, will have the advantage. Our job is to build relationships with top founder talent months, if not years, before the rest of the market realizes what they are capable of building.”

Built for day zero

Once Pear invests in a founder, Pear’s high-touch platform helps them turn an idea into a venture-scale company, from customer discovery and first hires to fundraising and go-to-market. The firm’s investment team includes former founders and operators who have collectively built more than a dozen companies, and its talent team has helped make more than 300 hires across the portfolio. PearX founders work in person with Pear investors at Pear Studio, the firm’s 14,000-square-foot San Francisco hub.

Since its first fund, Pear has invested in category leaders like DoorDash, Gusto, Vanta, Guardant Health, and Affinity. More recently, companies Pear first backed at pre-seed or seed in the past few years have announced major milestones:

• Listen Labs, an AI customer research platform, entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Salesforce.
• Forus, an AI network for medicine, raised a $150 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation led by Bain Capital Ventures, tripling its valuation four months after its Series B.
• Gravis Robotics, the builder of autonomous earthmoving technology, raised a $200 million Series A, the largest in construction robotics history
• Vals AI (PearX S23), an independent evaluator of AI models, raised $40 million led by Andreessen Horowitz.
• Andera (PearX S24),an AI-native platform for automated SOX testing, raised $37 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
• Phinity Labs (PearX S25), which is building fully autonomous chip design, reached eight figures in annualized run rate.

The next generation of Pear

As Pear invests in the next generation of category-defining companies with Fund V, three of its investors have been promoted to General Partner.

• Arash Afrakhteh joined Pear in 2020 and invests in enterprise and B2B companies across AI/ML, cloud, and data infrastructure. He previously co-founded Cariden Technologies, acquired by Cisco in 2012.
• Ajay Kamat joined Pear in 2015 and invests in consumer, fintech, and healthcare companies. He previously co-founded Wedding Party, a Pear-backed company acquired by Instacart, and served as its CEO.
• Shravan Reddy joined Pear in 2024 and invests in AI infrastructure, robotics, and vertical AI companies. He previously co-founded Pixelapse, acquired by Dropbox, and led engineering teams at Stripe.

“Arash, Ajay, and Shravan each embody what makes Pear special: deep care for founders, exceptional leadership, and a selfless commitment to our community,” said Nozad and Hershenson, Founding Managing Partners at Pear. “For us, this is one of the most meaningful milestones in Pear's history. Thirteen years after starting the firm, we now have a new generation of General Partners who have grown with Pear and will help build what comes next.”

About Pear VC

Pear VC is an early-stage venture firm that partners with founders to turn ideas into enduring companies. Founded in 2013, Pear was an early backer of DoorDash, Gusto, Vanta, Guardant Health, Listen Labs, and Forus and invests at pre-seed and seed across AI, B2B, biotech, consumer, deep tech, fintech, and healthcare. Learn more at pear.vc.

Press Contact:
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