Sandhya Venkatachalam is the Founder of Axiom Partners, an early-stage venture firm backing AI-native, category-defining startups before they become obvious. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Nebius — the ultimate cloud for AI innovators.Nebius provides AI infrastructure you can count on, combining reliability and speed with flexibility and engineering support unmatched by hyperscalers.AI leaders like Meta, Shopify, and Higgsfield already partner with Nebius to run their AI workloads. Plus, venture-backed startups can save up to $150,000 on compute costs when they apply for access. Visit nebius.com or nebius.com/startups to learn more~~~~~~~~~~~~~A former Partner at Khosla Ventures, she has invested in companies like Groq, Fireflies.ai, Forethought, and Helm.ai, and raised a $52M debut fund to double down on high-conviction, non-consensus bets. Known for her contrarian approach, Sandhya focuses on founders with unique visions of how AI will reshape industries—combining deep technical insight with a willingness to move early, often ahead of market consensus.Topics

How Axiom Partners finds category-defining AI without crowded infrastructure/application consensus
Scaling Groq inference leadership through earliest Khosla Ventures infrastructure conviction
Growing Fireflies.ai board tenure during enterprise meeting intelligence expansion

#AIVC #Startups #VC #EarlyStage #CapacityCrunch #Hypergrowth

Sandhya Venkatachalam, Axiom Partners Founder on Early-Stage AI