Venture Capital

Sierra Ventures

Sierra Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Peter Wendell in 1982 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The firm invests from inception through Series A in first-principles founders under the tagline "Conviction Before Consensus," writing checks of up to $5M at seed and up to $10M at Series A. Sierra's current investment thesis centers on the next wave of enterprise technology: Vertical AI (purpose-built AI for specific industries), Infrastructure AI, Frontier and Deep Tech, and Physical AI and Robotics, alongside a longstanding history in enterprise applications, digital health, SaaS, and security. Over its 40-plus-year history the firm has invested more than $2 billion across 13 early-stage funds, with its 13th fund closing in 2023 at $265 million, following Fund 12 at $215 million and Fund 11 at $170 million. Sierra reports 35 IPOs and hundreds of successful exits, having backed companies such as Elastic, Astronomer, Chronosphere, CourseHero, Q-CTRL, Spectro Cloud, Endor Labs, and Reflection AI. The firm is notable for its CXO Advisory Board of Fortune 1000 enterprise leaders who help portfolio companies land early customers. This profile tracks Sierra Ventures' identity and its portfolio graph across the API Evangelist network.

84 portfolio companies 84 publish APIs here 13 properties
Venture CapitalEarly StageSeedSeries AArtificial IntelligenceVertical AIInfrastructureEnterpriseDeep TechFrontier TechPhysical AIRoboticsDigital HealthSan MateoSilicon ValleyUnited States
Portfolio Strength across 82 profiled portfolio companies on the network
2 top-rated API companies 0 exemplar · 2 strong
12 agent-ready companies 1 agent-native · 11 agent-ready
Average quality of the book:
Composite emerging 23.6
Agent-Readiness human-only 9.6

Firms are ranked by cumulative portfolio strength — how many highly-rated API companies they've backed, weighted by tier across composite quality and agent-readiness. The averages below are a secondary read on the typical company in the book.

Sierra Ventures has 84 portfolio companies tracked on the APIs.io network, of which 84 (100%) publish APIs indexed here.

Its highest-rated API providers on the network are Hashnode, Modulate, Astronomer, Citcon, Band AI.

Portfolio on the Network

Portfolio companies that publish APIs indexed on APIs.io, grouped by their API Evangelist rating. Exemplar and Strong are expanded by default.

Strong 2 Solid coverage with minor gaps
Developing 17 Usable, with meaningful gaps to close
Thin 11 Limited public surface area
Emerging 28 Early or largely undocumented
Minimal 24 Almost no public developer surface
Unrated 2 Not yet scored

Properties

Portfolio

Where the firm publishes its investments

Team

Partners and investing staff

Content

Blog, podcast, newsletter, and research

Firm

The firm itself

Cohort brief

Auto-generated

The 82 portfolio companies with APIs in the catalog, backed by Sierra Ventures, scored on the Kin Score. Every figure below is computed from the catalog — nothing here is written.

Providers
82
of 84 on the roster
Mean Kin Score
23.1
+2.4 vs catalog 20.7
Mean Agent Readiness
8.8
-0.9 vs catalog 9.7
Spread
0.9–57.3
median 18.5 · σ 15.7
How the 82 split by band
Exemplar 0Strong 2Developing 15Thin 12Emerging 29Minimal 24
Facet averages, against the whole catalog
FacetThis cohortCatalogDifferenceScored
Access Clarity 29.8 22.3 +7.5 82
Developer Ergonomics 22.6 17.9 +4.7 82
Discoverability 61.2 60.4 +0.8 82
Operational Transparency 12.1 11.3 +0.8 82
Contract Governance 7.1 6.4 +0.7 82
Contract Quality 16.7 17.5 -0.8 82

A facet is averaged over the members that carry it, not over the whole cohort — the “Scored” column is that count. Averaging an absent facet as zero would score our own coverage gaps as the providers’ posture.

What this cohort publishes
ArtifactThis cohortCatalogDifference
MCP server (any) 26% 16% +10
MCP server (first-party) 9% 7% +2
Agent Skills 0% 0% 0
OAuth scopes 2% 9% -7
Security 98% 88% +10
Arazzo workflows 1% 2% -1
Governance rules 5% 13% -8

mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.

Top by Kin Score
  1. 1 Modulate 57.3
  2. 2 Hashnode 57
  3. 3 Astronomer 53.1
  4. 4 Band AI 52.7
  5. 5 Gitar 51.8
  6. 6 Spectro Cloud 51.1
  7. 7 Citcon 51
  8. 8 FriendliAI 49.9
  9. 9 PackageX 49.4
  10. 10 Phenom 48.2
Top by Agent Readiness
  1. 1 Rill Data 36
  2. 2 Krisp 34
  3. 3 fabric 32.3
  4. 4 FriendliAI 31.5
  5. 5 Modulate 30.8
  6. 6 Fintary 30.7
  7. 7 PackageX 30.4
  8. 8 Band AI 30
  9. 9 Calyptia 29.7
  10. 10 Hashnode 28.8
This roster declares 84 members; 82 resolve to a provider in the catalog and 82 carry a score (100%). The figures above describe the scored members only.Generated from the catalog build of 25 August 2026, across 26891 providers, using the same computation served by the APIs.io cohort API. Briefs are published for rosters of 5 or more scored providers; below that a distribution is not meaningful.

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑
aid: sierra-ventures
name: Sierra Ventures
description: >-
  Sierra Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded by Peter
  Wendell in 1982 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, in the heart of
  Silicon Valley. The firm invests from inception through Series A in
  first-principles founders under the tagline "Conviction Before Consensus,"
  writing checks of up to $5M at seed and up to $10M at Series A. Sierra's
  current investment thesis centers on the next wave of enterprise technology:
  Vertical AI (purpose-built AI for specific industries), Infrastructure AI,
  Frontier and Deep Tech, and Physical AI and Robotics, alongside a longstanding
  history in enterprise applications, digital health, SaaS, and security. Over
  its 40-plus-year history the firm has invested more than $2 billion across 13
  early-stage funds, with its 13th fund closing in 2023 at $265 million,
  following Fund 12 at $215 million and Fund 11 at $170 million. Sierra reports
  35 IPOs and hundreds of successful exits, having backed companies such as
  Elastic, Astronomer, Chronosphere, CourseHero, Q-CTRL, Spectro Cloud, Endor
  Labs, and Reflection AI. The firm is notable for its CXO Advisory Board of
  Fortune 1000 enterprise leaders who help portfolio companies land early
  customers. This profile tracks Sierra Ventures' identity and its portfolio
  graph across the API Evangelist network.
x-type: venture-capital
x-category: Venture Capital
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/sierra-ventures.png
tags:
  - Venture Capital
  - Early Stage
  - Seed
  - Series A
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - Vertical AI
  - Infrastructure
  - Enterprise
  - Deep Tech
  - Frontier Tech
  - Physical AI
  - Robotics
  - Digital Health
  - San Mateo
  - Silicon Valley
  - United States
url: >-
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/sierra-ventures/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-17'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis: []
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/
  - type: Portfolio
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/portfolio
  - type: Portfolio
    url: portfolio/sierra-ventures-portfolio.yml
  - type: Team
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/team
  - type: Team
    url: team/sierra-ventures-team.yml
  - type: InvestmentThesis
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/about
  - type: Blog
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/content
  - type: Podcast
    url: https://www.youtube.com/@sierraventures/featured
  - type: Jobs
    url: https://careers.sierraventures.com/
  - type: Contact
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/about
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sierra-ventures
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/Sierra_Ventures
  - type: Crunchbase
    url: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/sierra-ventures
  - type: Features
    data:
      - "Stage: Inception, Seed, Series A (early stage)"
      - "Typical check: up to $5M at seed; up to $10M at Series A"
      - "Sectors: Vertical AI, Infrastructure AI, Frontier & Deep Tech, Physical AI & Robotics, enterprise applications, digital health, SaaS, security"
      - "Geography: United States (Silicon Valley), global"
      - "AUM: $2B+ invested across 13 early-stage funds (self-reported)"
      - "Latest fund: Sierra Ventures XIII, $265M (2023); Fund XII $215M; Fund XI $170M"
      - "Founded: 1982 (Peter Wendell)"
      - "HQ: San Mateo, CA (1400 Fashion Island Blvd. Ste. 1010)"
      - "Track record: 35 IPOs; hundreds of exits (self-reported)"
    sources:
      - https://www.sierraventures.com/
      - https://www.sierraventures.com/about
      - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Ventures
    updated: '2026-07-17'
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com
  - FN: APIs.json
    url: http://apisjson.org
  - FN: Sierra Ventures
    url: https://www.sierraventures.com/

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