What Tessera Venture Partners does

Tessera Venture Partners is a New York-based, privately-held venture capital firm founded in 2018 by co-founders Xavier Segura and Sachin Jaitly. The firm specializes in early-stage investments in companies applying data, blockchain, and AI to finance, media, and healthcare, with a stated thesis of backing diverse-led founding teams (significant share of portfolio companies led by female or founders-of-color). Tessera operates two fund vehicles: Fund I, successfully deployed across 13+ portfolio companies, and Fund II, whose inaugural investment was a Series F in Carta (May 2020) followed by Bolt (August 2020).

The firm's revenue model is standard for early-stage venture capital: management fees on assets under management across its fund vehicles plus carried interest (equity participation) from portfolio company exits. Check sizes span seed through later growth stages, evidenced by participation in Figure's Series B ($65M, 2019) and Series C (2019), and Carta's Series F (2020). The product offering to limited partners is curated exposure to a concentrated portfolio of blockchain- and data-enabled companies (Figure, Bolt, Carta, Gemini, Ledger, Blockdaemon, Provenance, Hex Trust, Improbable, Dream Payments, Amino, Basket, Trugard) with operating support provided by a bench of five named advisors from JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, SGX, Oracle, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Intel.

Tessera's go-to-market is direct relationship-driven sourcing through founder outreach, accelerator partnerships (Techstars, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Columbia Venture Community, Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, Founder Institute), and community-led deal flow anchored on its diversity-investing positioning. The firm does not develop proprietary technology itself; instead, it provides capital, board representation, and operating support to portfolio companies that build data infrastructure, blockchain protocols, digital asset custody, eCommerce payments, lending, and cybersecurity products. Distribution of the firm's capital is exclusively through direct VC deal execution with no intermediary retail or marketplace channels.

Name

Tessera Venture Partners

Legal name

Tessera Venture Partners

Website

https://tesseravp.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Tessera Venture Partners is a New York-based, early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2018 that backs data, blockchain, and AI companies across finance, media, and healthcare, with a focus on diverse-led founding teams, operating two funds and 13+ portfolio investments.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Venture Capital

NAICS

Other Financial Investment Activities (5239)

SIC

Investment Advice (6282)

akta.pro primary industry

Early-Stage Venture Capital (Series A/B) (FSANAAAB)

akta.pro secondary industry

Secondary Venture Funds (VC Secondaries) (FSANAAAK)

Keywords

• Venture capital investing
• Early-stage technology investments
• Blockchain venture capital
• Fintech seed funding
• Data and AI investing

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Fund Management Fees & Carried Interest: As a venture capital firm, Tessera earns revenue through management fees on assets under management across its funds (Fund I closed, Fund II being raised) and carried interest (equity participation) from portfolio company exits. Investments span early-stage and growth-stage rounds.
2. Portfolio Equity Returns: Equity participation in portfolio companies including follow-on participation in subsequent funding rounds such as Figure Series B ($65M round, 2019) and Figure Series C (2019), Bolt (2020), and Carta Series F (2020), with realized returns from exits and unrealized appreciation.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Tessera Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm that raises and manages funds (Fund I launched in 2018, Fund II launched in 2020) and invests the capital in data-, AI-, and blockchain-enabled startups across FinTech, AdTech, and HealthTech. Limited partners gain exposure to a portfolio of 13+ companies, and portfolio companies receive capital plus hands-on operational support, board representation, and access to a network of senior advisors.

Product overview

Tessera Venture Partners is a New York-based early-stage venture capital firm operating two investment funds (Fund I, launched in 2018, and Fund II, launched in 2020) focused on data, fintech, blockchain, and AI-enabled companies. Its core offering to limited partners is access to a portfolio of 13+ technology companies across finance, media, and healthcare sectors, including Amino (blockchain-based media payments), Basket (consumer data ownership), Blockdaemon (blockchain node infrastructure), Bolt (eCommerce checkout), Carta (equity management), Dream Payments (cloud payment platform), Figure (blockchain-based lending on the Provenance protocol), Gemini (regulated cryptocurrency exchange), Hex Trust (digital asset custody), Improbable (metaverse infrastructure), Ledger (crypto wallets), Provenance (blockchain protocol for financial services), and Trugard (digital asset cybersecurity). Tessera complements its funds with research output including a blockchain whitepaper, blog thought leadership, and a focus on diversity-driven portfolio construction, with a significant portion of portfolio companies founded by female or founders of color.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Tessera Fund I Tessera Venture Partners' inaugural venture capital fund, launched in 2018 by co-founders Xavier Segura and Sachin Jaitly. The fund invests in early-stage data, fintech, and blockchain companies and has been deployed across 13+ portfolio companies spanning finance, media, and healthcare sectors.
• Tessera Fund II Tessera Venture Partners' second venture capital fund, raised after the success of Fund I. The fund's inaugural investment was a Series F investment in Carta (May 2020), followed by an investment in Bolt (August 2020), continuing Tessera's focus on early-stage data, fintech, and blockchain companies.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over $10 Billion in tech acquisitions supported by team experience
• +2 more outcomes

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered co-founder & managing partner and advisor.

• Xavier Seguraco-founder & managing partnerOthersCo-founder and Managing Partner. Over a decade of product/business development experience at Oracle, Verizon, and AppNexus. Helped build and commercialize technology stacks using machine learning. Alumni of Stanford GSB business-scaling program, Columbia Business School MBA, University of Michigan BA, and MIT executive education in blockchain. Launched Tessera in 2018 with Sachin Jaitly.
• Sachin Jaitlyco-founder & managing partnerOthersCo-founder and Managing Partner. Entrepreneur, big-data expert, and investor. Co-founder of flexEngage (patented digital-receipt solution deployed across tens of thousands of retailers). Previously led business development at Datalogix (acquired by Oracle). MBA in Finance and BA in International Business from Rollins College; MIT Executive Education Certificate in Blockchain Technologies; pursuing a Doctorate in economics.
• Chris EmmeadvisorOthersAdvisor with 20+ years across media and ad-tech. Former leader of Microsoft US Hispanic advertising and Yahoo! Hispanic Americas; launched RadiumOne and MediaIQ; turnaround of Rocketfuel; Managing Director, Americas of Eyeota; Board member, co-chair of Marketing, and Media & Advertising Sector Lead for Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of New York; mentor at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator; Harvard Business School alumnus.
• William GulyaadvisorOthersAdvisor; Managing Director and head of the Americas for SGX Group (Singapore Exchange) in New York. 25+ years in Asia/emerging markets across JPMorgan, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, and Credit Suisse. Venture capital investor for 20+ years across technology, blockchain, consumer, healthcare, and real estate. Wharton Executive Education alumnus.
• Snejana SevakadvisorOthersAdvisor; Co-founder and Managing Director for Business Development at Solutions for Human Capital (S4HC), a US-based software development company with an Eastern European offshoring center. Began career at Morgan Stanley in 1997. BBA from Baruch College and MBA from Fordham University; alumnus of the Wexner Heritage Program.
• Nitin MittaladvisorOthersAdvisor with 15+ years as a banker, hedge-fund analyst, and CFO. Modeled complex equity, debt, and M&A deals. Former CFO of a VC-backed software company that grew from five to 200+ employees. Bachelor's from University of Michigan and Master's from Columbia University.
• James LiaoadvisorOthersAdvisor with expertise in product, business, and entrepreneurship. Former server process design and product management at Intel. Investment Banking at Wells Fargo; Venture Capital at Bowery Capital and 37 Angels; Operations at ofo, Mobike, Spin. 8+ years coaching founders and startups at Founder Institute NYC, Coulter Program at Columbia Medical School, Techstars, ERA, and Columbia Venture Community. BS in EECS from UC Berkeley and MBA from Columbia Business School.

Scale indicators6 records

Recent moves8 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Others

• Tribe Capital: Data-driven venture firm that co-invested with Tessera in Carta's Series F. Comparable as a peer in the equity-management and fintech investment space, and as a co-investor in shared portfolio companies, though broader in stage and sector coverage.

Direct peers

• Blockchain Capital: Early-stage venture firm exclusively focused on blockchain and crypto assets. Directly comparable to Tessera's blockchain-heavy portfolio strategy and seed-to-growth stage check sizes across digital asset infrastructure, exchanges, and DeFi.
• ParaFi Capital: Alternative asset manager focused on blockchain and decentralized finance opportunities. Closely comparable to Tessera in its specialization on blockchain, DeFi, and tokenized finance, including exposure to firms like Figure and Provenance.
• Polychain Capital: Venture firm dedicated to crypto assets and blockchain protocols, investing across early- and growth-stage rounds. Comparable to Tessera in thesis focus, stage, and emphasis on token and equity exposure to leading blockchain protocols.
• Paradigm: Crypto-native investment firm researching and backing companies and protocols at the frontier of crypto and Web3. Overlaps with Tessera's blockchain and crypto infrastructure thesis, though operating at a materially larger fund size.
• Pantera Capital: Crypto-focused venture and hedge fund investing across blockchain infrastructure, exchanges, and DeFi. Highly comparable to Tessera in thesis concentration on digital assets and in backing category leaders like Figure, Coinbase, and Circle.

Broad incumbents

• Digital Currency Group: Holding company that builds, buys, and invests in blockchain and digital-asset businesses including Grayscale and Coinbase. Overlaps with Tessera's portfolio exposure to Gemini and other crypto infrastructure, though at vastly greater scale.
• Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto): Dedicated crypto fund within Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest US venture firms. Overlaps with Tessera's blockchain thesis and shares co-investors in companies like Figure, but operates with much greater scale and broader sector coverage.
• Galaxy Digital: Diversified crypto-focused financial services and investment firm with venture, trading, and asset-management arms. Comparable to Tessera in its crypto-native investment orientation but with a much broader and more institutional operating model.

Emerging players

• Coinbase Ventures: Strategic investment arm of Coinbase focused on early-stage crypto and blockchain startups. Comparable to Tessera in backing category-defining crypto infrastructure and protocols, though typically writes smaller initial checks and leverages Coinbase's platform.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/12590912

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Tessera Venture Partners