Samir Kumar
Managing Director, M12
Samir is a managing director at M12, leading investments globally where
artificial intelligence or machine learning is a key point of leverage.
He also stewards the fund’s Vanguard Bets investment category—startups
aiming for breakthroughs that will result in generational shifts in the
technology landscape. Samir’s other investment focuses include quantum
computing, robotics, autonomous systems, transportation and
silicon—especially for AI. Samir manages a team developing theses for new
technology areas and oversees the fund’s technical and scientific advisory
board.
Prior to joining M12, Samir was a senior director of business development
and product management in Qualcomm’s corporate R&D division. There, he
led early-stage product validation, partnerships, acquisitions, and
strategy for embedded machine learning, computer vision and heterogeneous
computing. Samir started his career at Microsoft, where he spent several
years leading product management and product planning efforts for
enterprise mobility before joining Palm and Samsung.
Samir is a regular conference speaker on his investment focus areas. He has
served on or moderated panels of VCs and subject matter experts at LDV
Vision Summit, tinyML Summit, and Cybersec&AI Connected.