Analysis
Adit Singh, the venture investor who sourced and co-led Cerebras's first institutional funding round roughly a decade ago, has joined Mayfield as a partner focused on infrastructure, TechCrunch reported. Singh, an electrical engineer and chip designer by training, was a partner at Foundation Capital when he led the Cerebras bet; Foundation Capital now holds roughly 7% of Cerebras, making it the firm's third-largest shareholder following Cerebras's May 2026 IPO, which valued the AI-chip maker at close to $50 billion.
Between Foundation Capital and Mayfield, Singh co-founded Neotribe Ventures in 2017 and led it for four years before joining early-stage firm Cota Capital. At Mayfield, he'll invest across semiconductors, hardware and infrastructure software, cybersecurity, and physical AI -- categories that require, in his words, "being able to look at any workload and see how it works from the application all the way down to the transistor." Mayfield general partner Navin Chaddha said the two had discussed Singh joining the firm for fifteen years before the timing finally aligned.
“Between Foundation Capital and Mayfield, Singh co-founded Neotribe Ventures in 2017 and led it for four years before joining early-stage firm Cota Capital.”
Why the move now
Singh pointed to Mayfield's existing semiconductor bets as part of his rationale, citing Upscale AI at a $2 billion valuation and Lumilens, which raised $700 million at a $5.5 billion valuation. Mayfield manages roughly $3 billion in assets and can write seed checks as large as $20 million -- a structural advantage in a market where AI infrastructure seed rounds have themselves inflated well past what most seed-stage funds can underwrite alone, forcing hardware and chip founders to either take smaller, less strategic seed checks or find one of the few funds large enough to lead at scale.
Singh's hire fits a broader pattern of specialist chip and infrastructure investors moving to larger, multi-stage firms as AI infrastructure funding has scaled beyond what boutique semiconductor-focused funds can write alone. Cerebras's IPO validated the thesis that a well-timed, decade-long bet on a chip challenger to Nvidia can return real capital -- a track record that is exactly what a firm like Mayfield is paying for by bringing Singh in-house rather than co-investing alongside him.