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.