Basis Set Ventures

Basis Set Ventures is a San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2017 by Dr. Lan Xuezhao, one of the earliest institutional investors in the artificial intelligence and automation wave, when the firm's thesis was considered niche rather than obvious. Lan Xuezhao holds a PhD in psychology and MA in statistics from the University of Michigan, led the corporate development strategy team at Dropbox where she oversaw mergers and acquisitions, and was among the earliest institutional backers of Scale AI, the AI data labeling and infrastructure company, long before the current AI investment boom. Basis Set closed its fourth fund, a $250 million vehicle, in January 2026, bringing total assets under management to approximately $850 million across four funds, with Melinda French Gates' Pivotal Ventures and Foundry named as fund investors. The firm invests at seed and Series A stages in AI-native companies and distinguishes itself by its own use of artificial intelligence in its investment process: proprietary tools including the Pascal system for deal sourcing and founder evaluation, a 24/7 founder concierge team, and psychometric analysis to identify founder archetypes most likely to produce outlier outcomes. Investment pillars span autonomous systems and robotics, AI infrastructure and tooling, enterprise AI automation, and AI-powered consumer businesses. Note: the original directory lists Hex, Replit, Covariant, and Weights and Biases as portfolio companies. Publicly confirmed portfolio companies include Scale AI, Path Robotics, Workstream, Ergeon, Quince, Drata, Cusp, and Rasa. The portfolio as listed in the source data has been reproduced, and individual company associations should be verified.