VP of Marketing & Head of Global Comms at @lightspeedvp
San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2009
- Tweets2.1K
- Following1.7K
- Followers618
- Likes3.1K
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
@JeffDean has built the foundations that every era of modern computing has stood on, from web-scale infrastructure to scaling deep learning itself. Exceptional people inspire great talent and the founding team around him is among the strongest I have ever seen in over 25 years of investing. @lightspeedvp is honored to join them from the start of this journey.
Announcing Discovery Loop!
I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress. The four of us have worked together for 14 to 30 years, and have helped build some of the world’s most used products, infrastructure and AI models, and we’re excited to turn our attention to this ambitious endeavor.
♾
Learn more at: discoveryloop.com
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
Can't think of team better positioned to take on this incredible mission!
Congratulations @JeffDean, @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix
@lightspeedvp @ravi_lsvp
Announcing Discovery Loop!
I am very excited to announce that, along with my longtime friends and collaborators @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML and @quocleix, we are founding Discovery Loop (@DiscoLoopAI), a Public Benefit Corporation whose mission is to automate machine learning, science, and engineering to accelerate discoveries and progress. The four of us have worked together for 14 to 30 years, and have helped build some of the world’s most used products, infrastructure and AI models, and we’re excited to turn our attention to this ambitious endeavor.
♾
Learn more at: discoveryloop.com
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
So much of the AI conversation today is focused on the creation of new companies. @nilamg started @beaconsoftwarex with a different belief: that many of the businesses best positioned to benefit from AI already exist.
After leading the company’s Series B last year, @lightspeedvp is proud to re-invest in Beacon’s $225M Series C. Also delighted to welcome @mschaaf and @bgoutham to the team.
New funding, expanded team, same mission — transforming essential businesses with AI, and giving ambitious software a forever home.
Silicon Valley and Main Street meet in the middle with @beaconsoftwarex.
This is why we're excited to double down in the company for their $225M Series C.
Beacon software buys, builds, and grows essential software businesses, integrating AI to boost operations. Their focus is on the back office, simplifying processes so that founders can focus on growth.
@nilamg saw that essential businesses are key spaces where AI could revitalize and expand operations. They built Beacon to buy, build, and grow essential software businesses, all while preserving independence and identity in the process.
Right now, Beacon is growing alongside the businesses they support by expanding its leadership team.
@mschaaf, former CTO of Instacart and Superhuman, joins as Beacon’s COO/CPO. @bgoutham, most recently AngelList’s CTO, joins as Beacon’s CTO. The two executives will partner to scale Beacon’s AI-native operating platform, aligning product, engineering, and AI across the company’s portfolio.
Congratulations to the team on this raise! We’re thrilled to back a company that’s going above and beyond to empower its customers.
CC: Lightspeed partners Isaac Kim, @bsomaia, and Amish Desai
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
$100M ARR in 18 months. $32B acquisition in five years.
@wiz_io didn’t just build a cloud security company. They redefined how fast a category leader can be created.
We backed @assaf_rappaport, @amiluttwak, Yinon, and Roy because they combined founder intensity with customer obsession at a pace nobody could match.
Today, the deal with @Google closes.
Congrats to the entire Wiz team. This is what happens when speed meets substance.
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
Nobody planned for Claude Code three years ago. It emerged because of @AnthropicAI's ability to push the frontier of intelligence.
Their $30B Series G funding we think is going to bring not just Anthropic, but AI, into a whole new era of benefits delivered to the economy and society.
Visualize technology as an escalator; a steady constant, always carrying us upward into the future.
And then, every now and again, something avant-garde emerges, a massive step-function change that thrusts us into the next cycle of technology. A moment that will be remembered for many years to come.
To all of us at Lightspeed, @AnthropicAI represents that structural reset.
Cc: @ravi_lsvp, @GuruChahal, and Sebastian Duesterhoff
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
This is a pivotal moment for technology and one we will look back on as a society for years to come. When it comes to the future of tech, it would be a mistake to believe that boldly scaling intelligence can’t go hand-in-hand with safety and reliability.
AI is ushering us into a new world of new possibilities, careers, and breakthroughs. We at @lightspeedvp stand behind @AnthropicAI with our full support.
I’d like to extend a big congratulations to Anthropic and their team (esp. @DarioAmodei + @DanielaAmodei + Krishna Rao) for their $30B Series G raise.
CC: @guruchahal and Sebastian Duesterhoff
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
The next paradigm shift in AI is here.
Since we first partnered in 2023, the team at @AnthropicAI has amazed us with their foresight, conviction, and execution.
That's why, after leading the company’s Series E and F rounds, we're excited to continue to re-invest in their latest Series G round.
Congratulations to @DarioAmodei, @DanielaAmodei, and the entire Anthropic team on raising a $30B Series G.
As frontier AI continues to advance exponentially, Anthropic is positioned to become one of the most transformational companies of our generation. We’re proud to support them on their journey to scale intelligence for the benefit of all.
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
One of the biggest limits on AI right now isn’t the models. It’s the hardware.
That’s why @RicursiveAI stood out to me. @annadgoldie and @azaliamirh helped pioneer AI-driven chip design with AlphaChip, and now they’re building a recursive system where AI improves the hardware powering the next generation of AI.
Proud to lead Ricursive’s $300M Series A and partner with this team as they tackle one of the most critical constraints in the AI stack. Read more on our blog: lsvp.com/stories/investing-i…
Cc @ravi_lsvp and @jonahcader
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
.@Lightspeedvp’s Cyber 60 Podcast is about learning from people who’ve built through change, not just talked about it. @BipulSinha is one of those people.
Before founding @RubrikInc, Bipul started as an engineer during the rise of modern data infrastructure, then went on to back and help build category-defining companies.
This conversation is personal!
Bipul and I were office mates at Lightspeed before we went on our respective journeys and I have the utmost respect for how he’s reinvented himself years after year.
Today, as Chairman, Co-Founder, and CEO, he’s leading Rubrik’s evolution from backup and recovery into cyber resilience, and helping enterprises operationalize AI on secure, governed data.
We talked about why non-consensus markets can produce the biggest outcomes, why culture is the only thing that endures, and how Rubrik is thinking about permissions-preserving data access and “agentic rewind” in the generative AI era.
This was a great discussion. I hope you find it insightful. Full episode here: youtu.be/SiXrqy2rSBc?si=u1ix…
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
@ravi_lsvp and @bsomaia sat down with @eringriffith at the @nytimes to discuss the opportunity ahead: nytimes.com/2025/12/15/techn…
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
Today we're announcing over $9B in capital for a new family of funds — our largest raise in 25 years.
AI is rewriting the rules. We're backing the founders building what comes next.
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
AI is the most transformative technology shift in a generation and @lightspeedvp has been investing behind this conviction for years, leading early and inflection growth financings for many of the world’s most important AI companies.
AI has opened up entirely new markets that simply did not exist two years ago. Compounding progress in AI will drive profound shifts in professional services, scientific discovery, autonomy and multiple other markets in 2026 and beyond.
Today, we’re announcing a new series of 6 funds totaling over $9B, allowing us to continue backing the founders defining this transformation.
Enormous thanks to both our Limited Partners and founders who have trusted Lightspeed over the past 25 years, challenged us to be bolder, move faster and think differently about what is possible.
My partner @bsomaia and I shared more about how this fundraise will advance Lightspeed’s investment platform with @eringriffith at @nytimes nytimes.com/2025/12/15/techn…
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
We have been talking to a lot of teams building AI agents, and the same thing keeps coming up. So many of them don’t know what their agents do once they are out in production.
That is why my conversation with @snarkyzk, co-founder and CEO of @raindrop_ai, stood out. We @lightspeedvp are launching our new series Investment Memo with Raindrop because we recently led their $15M seed round, and this episode gives the clearest view into the problem the company is solving.
Zubin walked me through the strange failure modes he and his co-founders @benhylak and @alexisgauba kept running into early on. No clean errors you could log. The odd behavior that only shows up when millions of production events stack up. Loops that went nowhere. Dropped context. Tool calls drifting into unexpected places. Exactly the kinds of issues teams across the industry keep mentioning.
They built semantic signals and real user driven signals because nothing else showed them what was happening. What started as internal tooling eventually became Raindrop.
That moment of clarity comes through clearly in the episode.
If you are building anything with agents, it is worth hearing Zubin’s perspective.
Episode 1 is up. Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=MWbz_n9H…
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
The #FortuneCyber60 list is here.🎉
Along with @lightspeedvp and @awscloud, we identified the most innovative startups creating the tools to meet threats head on and keep businesses safe. trib.al/oLAUFgz
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
The NYSE is proud to recognize this year's @FortuneMagazine Cyber 60 Winners, presented by @lightspeedvp and @awscloud!
See featured companies below ⤵️
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
Congrats to the 60 venture-backed startups on the 2026 @FortuneMagazine Cyber 60 List from @lightspeedvp and @AWSstartups!
AI is reshaping cybersecurity, and these founders are building solutions that will define how organizations stay secure for decades.
Reply Post: Read more about the companies on the Fortune #Cyber60 list:
lsvp.com/cyber60
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
Some founders build for the next milestone. Others build for the next generation.
In the premiere of The Cyber 60 Podcast, Jay Chaudhry, Founder and CEO of @zscaler, joins Lightspeed Partner @GuruChahal to talk about zero trust, the courage to go against the grain, and why lasting impact comes from conviction, not perfect timing.
When Jay started Zscaler, most believed the network perimeter could be secured with on-prem hardware. He saw the opportunity to move security to the cloud long before “zero trust” became a buzzword.
Catch the full conversation on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts—it’s one you don’t want to miss: youtube.com/watch?si=NDX7u3P…
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
It’s IPO day for Lightspeed-backed @Navan, and what a journey it’s been. ✈️ From rethinking business travel to reinventing how companies manage expenses, @ariel042cohen, @itwig, and the Navan team have built something extraordinary. When global travel came to a halt during COVID, they kept building. They used that time to double down on their vision, and when people began to travel again they were there with the solutions needed to make business travel as easy as personal travel.
We’ve been proud to back them since their seed round and can’t wait to see what’s next.
Read more: lsvp.com/stories/celebrating…
Cc: Lightspeed Partners @Ravi_lsvp, @arifj
#NavanIPO
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
What an incredible day at @Nasdaq celebrating @Navan’s IPO. Congratulations to @arielcoco, @itwig, and the entire team on this milestone. Five years ago, as COVID shut down global travel, Navan’s business was hit hard. But what happened next was a masterclass in resilience.
Rachel Manson Grill retweeted
Building my own cybersecurity company, I learnt how rare conviction really is. The kind that lets you make a bet before anyone else believes in it.
That’s why I wanted the first episode of The Cyber 60 Podcast to feature Jay Chaudhry, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of @zscaler. I’ve known Jay for more than a decade through our partnership at Lightspeed and have watched him redefine what cloud security could be.
We talked about Zscaler’s early years, what it took to convince customers to move to the cloud in 2007, and how zero trust is shaping the next era of AI-driven defense.
📷 Watch now on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts - link below...