Mary D’Onofrio, who led Bessemer Venture Partners’ investments in unicorns including Anthropic and Canva, has left to join Crosslink Capital, Coins2Day has exclusively learned.
D’Onofrio will be on the leadership team for Crosslink’s crossover fund, focusing on Series B-plus investments in AI vertical software and infrastructure.
“The world is changing so rapidly thanks to AI,” said D’Onofrio when reached by Coins2Day. “I think there’s an interesting opportunity to have a fun strategy that takes advantage of the dislocation that AI is creating…to invest in both new AI-native companies, and even to extend the runway for existing companies that might need to rethink their architecture or go-to-market in the context of that rapidly changing world.”
D’Onofrio spent seven years at Bessemer, becoming a partner in 2021. Her Bessemer portfolio included Anthropic, Canva, Teleport, HashiCorp, Toast, and Wrapbook. At Crosslink she will be pursuing “fewer, higher-conviction deals” as AI valuations remain high.
When it comes to valuations, “it’s still a little bit of a tale of two cities,” said D’Onofrio. “Some AI companies are getting valued incredibly highly. But the rationale is that there are massive TAMs [total addressable markets] that are going to be captured. You can argue there are a lot of services that will be added to historically constrained software to expand even further.”
Crosslink—whose past and present portfolio includes BetterUp, Postmates, and Flume Health—made news recently amid fintech startup Chime’s successful IPO. The firm led Chime’s Series A in 2014 and was among Chime’s largest shareholders (with about a 9.5% stake) as the company went public this month. D’Onofrio declined to comment on Chime.
Crosslink, D’Onofrio said, has a three-pronged strategy of early-stage venture, growth, and public investing.
“It allows us to be pretty dexterous in terms of the companies Crosslink serves. So, for our immediate success stories, it can pull on different pools of capital and continue to invest. And for those that take more time—or that might see success and need a few years of finding their way—the firm could be really patient partners; they can invest truly across the life cycle.”