James Wu
"Over the last decade, I've worn a lot of hats - from conducting AI and security research in academia to co-founding and selling AdaptiLab to leading ML projects at Amperity. Through it all, I've been hooked on the process of building products 0-1. As First Round's first dedicated Infrastructure & AI/ML Investor, I get to work with founders tackling the same thorny problems I faced when building and scaling machine learning systems."
I'm eager to dive into the new technical solutions being built to solve some of the biggest challenges facing enterprises today — and hope to be a support system to founders on this hard but rewarding journey. It's a privilege to be partnering with the talented and passionate entrepreneurs building the next wave of revolutionary ML/AI, data infrastructure, devtools, and security companies.
James started his career in academia, conducting artificial intelligence and data security research with grants from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense. During this time, he also worked as a VC fellow, where he assisted with investing tasks and supported early-stage portfolio companies.
Becoming hooked on the process of building products from 0-1, he cofounded AdaptiLab, which helped companies scale their machine learning and data science teams from hiring to productivity. In three whirlwind years, AdaptiLab participated in the Techstars Seattle Accelerator, raised a seed round, signed Fortune 1000s and unicorns (such as Experian and Convoy) as customers, and was acquired.
Later, James joined Seattle unicorn Amperity, where he led new machine learning projects and contributed to patents and research papers on their core machine learning and data systems. These experiences prepared him for his current role as First Round's first dedicated Infrastructure & AI/ML Investor.
A West Coast native, James has lived up and down the coast — from SoCal to SF to Seattle and back to SF. He studied Computer Science and Statistics at Duke for his undergrad and attended Stanford GSB for an MBA before dropping out after joining First Round.