Ben Mathes

Ben now leads one of our top strategic imperatives: building AI systems deep into how we operate and invest. At Felicis, Ben will build an AI “exoskeleton” for venture that uses frontier models to supercharge the investing team’s sourcing, research, and decision-making. Think context-aware research that helps us invest, scenario planning to anticipate strategic shifts, inform our investments, and guide our portfolio companies through them, coding agents that surface the top 1% of talent early, and custom workflows that feel like magic.

Ben brings a rare mix of product taste and engineering depth to his work and he’s spent his career building tools that solve root problems rather than just stringing together existing APIs. He’s also a builder agnostic to stage and industry.  He’s designed automated deal closings at AngelList, developed intelligence products for investment teams at Greylock and Thiel Capital, and most recently, spent six years at Google leading the development of their internal AI supply chain tracking, monitoring, and measuring.

Outside of work, Ben maintains a pace that usually ends with him collapsed on a couch. He is a high-level squash player, an avid skier, and backcountry explorer who knows a few Sierra secrets he is willing to (quietly) share. He has a habit of stopping mid-run to pet every dog he encounters and occasionally travels to nerd mini- and un-conferences to dive into his latest technical obsessions. Ben lives in San Francisco, where he continues to find excuses for a bit of irreverence in everything he builds.