NYC Tech Week 2025: The AI-Native Fund

At Banyan Ventures, we’re proud to be the only AI-native venture firm headquartered in New York. We invest exclusively in companies building foundational AI infrastructure and applications — not retrofits, not buzzwords.

This week, that conviction played out in real conversations, real demos, and real deal flow.

Gen AI Zoo – Fireside Panel on the Future of Inference at Microsoft Reactor

I hosted a panel with two of the most important minds in AI infrastructure: 

Felix Ejeckam, CEO & Co-Founder, Akash Systems
Developing diamond-based cooling for AI chips to dramatically improve power efficiency and thermal management in data centers.

Gilles Backhus, Co-Founder & VP of AI & Product, Recogni
Reinventing inference chips using log-based math — purpose-built for edge deployment and generative AI performance.

We explored:

• Why NVIDIA’s general-purpose dominance won’t last
• How power and cooling will define the next decade of AI infra
• What sub-10W inference chips unlock for AI-native apps
• The economic implications of custom silicon

The audience: Founders, engineers, and investors who asked the kinds of questions you only get in rooms filled with real builders.

Banyan Ventures Private Founder & LP Gathering

We hosted an invite-only dinner at Odd Sister in SoHo, curated for founders and LPs shaping the next generation of AI.

In attendance:

• Todd Benson – Former Co-Founder, Citibank Private Equity Group; LP & Advisory Board, Banyan
• Jeff Kirstein – EVP, Financial Recovery Technologies; LP & Advisory Board, Banyan
• Felix Ejeckam, CEO, Akash Systems
• Gilles Backhus, Co-Founder & VP of AI, Recogni
• And many others

The conversations were high signal, and already catalyzing real partnerships.

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Next Wave NYC – $50K AI Pitch Day

I has a great time attending Next Wave NYC’s $50,000 AI pitch competition, where leading pre-seed startups presented to a packed room of investors.

The standout companies showed:

• Early traction and deep technical talent
• Clear commercial use cases
• Thoughtful go-to-market strategies

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Google for Startups – Cloud AI Accelerator Demo Day

To close out the week, I attended the Cloud AI Accelerator Demo Day at Google for Startups at 85 10th Ave.

• Multi-cloud strategies for generative AI workloads
• How founders are navigating compute bottlenecks
• GTM strategies for infrastructure-first startups

Banyan AI Fund I company MultiModal presented and did a fantastic job. Banyan was a amount the first investor on the cap table.

What It All Means

• Infrastructure is heating up — but the winners will be the ones who can ship, scale, and survive hardware-level complexity.
• AI-native is the new standard — the best teams are building from first principles, not bolting AI onto legacy stacks.
• New York isn’t emerging — it’s arrived — as a top-tier tech hub with unique gravity, talent density, and capital access.

We’re proud to call NYC home. And as the only AI-native fund based here, we’re just getting started.

– Sam Awrabi
Founder & General Partner
Banyan Ventures