Intel Capital with Jen Ard E 37

Welcome to Impact TV, a corporate venture video series in collaboration with the Kaufman Fellows. I'm Jack Crawford, a founding general partner at Seracap Impact Venture Capital. Alongside with my colleague, Pat Bumpas, and my Kaufman Fellow co chair, Alessandro Santo, we're thrilled to welcome to the show Jen Ard, managing director and head of operations at Intel Capital. Hi, Jen.

How are you doing today? Hey. Good. Thanks for having me.

Okay. So we did a little bit of background on you and and learned a little bit about your gallivanting around 50 different countries during your professional career during your lifetime. I've I've had a chance to go with the Kaufman Fellows to London and Dubai and even spent some time in Tokyo. I think those are my top three favorite cities.

What what's your favorite city after all this travel around? Yeah. I actually, my favorite places are not big cities, which is kind of unique. I spent luckily, at until we have sabbaticals, I spent a month in Africa, and it was hands down my favorite trip ever.

If you ever get a chance to go, go. I'm on a board in Zurich, Switzerland. And last time I was in Switzerland, I decided to spend a couple weeks there and absolutely one of the most beautiful countries in the world. And then I think from a uniqueness perspective, I spent a week in the Galapagos Islands on a small boat, and it is also from an ecosystem perspective just phenomenal.

Those are top three, but lots more on the list. Okay. If you need someone to carry your bags on your next trip, I'm your manor. Right?

Just just just just give me a call. Cheap and and, yeah, it's not luxurious, but it's fun for sure. Sounds exciting. Okay.

Let's talk a little bit about your professional adventure. You've had a a bit of a ride at Intel Capital starting as a financial analyst and then migrating into Intel Capital and and, you know, arguably, you look at Intel Capital for most of us as sort of the the OG in the industry starting in 1991 and and being around for forever is, you know, arguably the the most active and most successful corporate venture group in the world, in the history of the world, which is pretty cool.

Tell us about your journey just at Intel and kinda migrating up, over to Intel Capital. Yeah. So after business school, I joined Intel in a finance rotation program, and I spent a few different rotations throughout Intel. And probably about ten years into my career, I worked in a group called the new business initiatives group, which I think every corporation has one where they're trying to figure out innovation inside of the walls of the company.

And as part of that, we were working on something where we engaged with a startup company outside of Intel, and we got Intel Capital involved in that. That was actually my very first introduction. I kind of always heard about the group, and that was my first introduction to the team. And I worked really closely with one of the managing directors and one of the investment directors, and we ended up doing a deal.

And I was just like, hey. That was actually really fun. I I enjoyed that. And a few months down the road, the finance manager actually sent me an email and he was like, Hey, we have a finance role available in Intel Capital.

Would you like to rotate through? So I made the move over and within a few months starting to work there, I started working on a deal with our lithography supplier in Amsterdam called ASML and ended up working on that deal for almost a full year. It was a $3,200,000,000 pipe transaction. And after that, I just was like, hey.

I don't really wanna go back to corporate finance. How about you hire me as an investor? So I actually made the move over after I'd been in finance for a few years. So I've been in Intel Capital, I think, this point thirteen years.

I focus on anything that's silicon related. I've done tool companies, materials, all of the stuff that historically before AI was actually like the least cool thing to invest in, and now it's getting a little bit cooler. And then about five years ago, I also took over the operations role. So I kind of split my time.

I do half investing, half operations. So I spend a lot of time with marketing and PR, finance, IT, portfolio development, all of those teams, and help run of that organization, which is fun. I attend partner meeting. I go to all our investment committee meetings.

So it's a great way to see both sides of the house. I tell everybody if I tell an investor they have to do something, I have to do it too. So it's actually great to see both sides. So you got you have to help me with this, Jen.

I don't I don't know how you do this. I have a really difficult time trying to become an expert on venture and investing and finance and then also trying to keep up with, like, the geniuses that I'm surrounded with that really know the technology at a deep level. Do you have any personal or or professional development advice, for me on how to keep up? Because I always feel like I'm the least technical in the room, and I'm doing my best to keep up or or research different different areas, but, deep techs can get pretty complex.

Yeah. Well, especially from a finance background, that was actually something I was really nervous about. What I love about working at Intel is, you know, we have a 100,000 really smart people around us. So often during a deal, I find a technical mentor, and I go work with them.

Often, who is in that space, like metrology, I very quickly that's one of the spaces measurement equipment have so I have somebody in the business unit that every time I have a metrology company, I go have a conversation with them. Like, okay. Tell me about why this is so interesting. Why is this different than what we have?

You know? And eventually, you you get well versed. But, yes, every time you're in a new space, new company, you need somebody, some way. Also, you know, the the AI tools have been great too.

I can say, hey. Tell me about this, and why is this different? Like, it's it has cut research time pretty significantly. But those technical mentors are really, really valuable.

That's helpful. That's helpful advice. And and I I find I get the same level of support from from my team. There's just so many interesting areas of innovation.

And so you're trying to get smart on, you know, deep areas of cybersecurity and the you know, try and track down not only the world's experts, but but who you have on your team that's got some familiarity. So, yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. Intel, I I it's something like 1,800 companies that you've invested in. It's something like north of $20,000,000,000 that has created enterprise value of, like, 170,000,000,000.

And, you know, I think my numbers are roughly accurate. Why do you think why do think Intel has been so successful? I mean, obviously, there's you know, you've endured the test of time. Right?

Oftentimes, they say once a CBC gets through ten years, then it's and then it's around for the for the long haul. You you've been around since 1991. I mean, can you can you when you look at sort of from the inside why Intel's been so successful, what do you attribute that to? Yeah.

I think there's a few things. One is I think we've had really, really supportive management. So, you know, we've had a few CEO changes over those thirty five years. In fact, thirty five year anniversary this year.

We're kind of looking back and looking at the history as we go through this anniversary. We've got really supportive management. So that has been a huge testament to that. But I think there's a few things.

One is just the longevity of the team. I there's a lot of VCs and CVCs who turn over people pretty quickly, and we have not done that. Right? We have people who are sitting on boards, who have been on boards of, you know, deep tech companies for twenty years.

And I think that our entrepreneurs really find a lot of value in that, right? Somebody who has been through this through the ages and have seen things and have helped companies get their pivots and hard times. So just longevity of the team, I think is one. Also, I think we really have figured out how to work with our business unit.

Again, every CVC evolves over time. And I think that's one thing that has kept us alive is that, you know, we have really, really honed in on how we do things and where we're finding value. And we're continually looking at our processes and how we work with our companies and really making changes and improvements. So I think just part of that is that we've really been able to, you know, double down on working with Intel and getting those technologists into the companies and helping them on problems and making customer introductions, you know, really getting that down to a science that our company is really, really attribute value to and want us to be as investors.

You know, if we were not helpful board members and investors, I I, you know, I think we'd be having a very different conversation. One of the things that I think you're you're you're known for, tell me how much you embrace this is the ability to add value beyond capital through curated introductions. It seems as though you've gotten really good at, at providing value by introducing the right resource, the right information, or the right new relationship at the right time. Can you talk a little bit about sort of curated introductions?

Yeah. So we started this years ago when we started people probably have heard about Intel Capital's global summits. I think we were one of the very first VCs that brought our entire portfolio together, and we would have thousands of people in the room and have curated introductions. We found that was really hard when you have some semiconductor company from Asia and cybersecurity, like finding the right customers.

So we've really tried to hone that in to say, okay, we're gonna hold events like we just held an AI event in New York City that was really focused on financial services. And we had a bunch of banks around the table. And we treat this like speed dating. We move the companies around the table, get the right introductions.

And then just like everything at Intel, we are, like, really, really focused on the numbers. So that PD team comes back. They log all of that in Salesforce. They're making sure, you know, every single company that met, they are following up on that and making sure that those conversations continue to happen.

So I think part of it is just being super vigilant of, like, follow-up and making sure conversations happen. Because you meet someone at a conference, like, how often do you come back and really make sure that those conversations continue to happen? So our PD team has a chance at that. They come back.

Our Salesforce metrics look awesome. They have charts and, like, reminders and but I I think that's part of it. It's just one is we're able to facilitate those relationships partly through Intel, partly through Intel Capital, partly through, you know, all of our network, but we've really honed those relationship over time and then have gotten our event strategy down to a science. So that is just part of how we've done this over the years.

That's super helpful. Outside of being around for a long time, getting really good at sort of sourcing and screening opportunities and then adding value beyond capital through curated networking and some of the other things you do, is there anything else that that you would highlight that differentiates Intel Capital from, you know, other traditional sort of CVCs in the marketplace that maybe have been around for for some time, not thirty five years, but but but maybe have been around for a while.

Anything else that you'd highlight that differentiates Intel Capital? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. About eight years ago, we went through a transition where, you know, we were really looking at investments and making I think one year we made something between seventy and eighty investments in a given year, which is a lot, a lot for a CVC, even a lot for a VC.

And we were putting $12,000,000 into those companies, and we were kind of doing a, hey, there's an area, and we'd put investments into a few companies. And we really started looking at that strategy saying, hey, is that really, really successful? Is this gonna get us good returns? Is this gonna get us strategic value?

And we really stepped back from that model and said, hey, we wanna put meaningful capital into companies. We wanna have meaningful ownership just like a lot of VCs, financial VCs, and we wanna take board seats. So, you know, it took a little bit of time to like hone the team into that and really get people versed at leading deals. Because if you're gonna put meaningful capital, you're leading deals, you're setting valuation, you're setting terms.

And a lot of our team needed training to be able to do that and really flex those muscles. But that was we were one of the first, if not the first, CBC that actually took board seats. And, you know, it's process going through your legal department saying, hey, we want to take the liability of being a board member. And we've had lots of CVCs come to us since then saying, hey, we'd love to explore that idea.

How did you And so that's just one of the things that we've been at the forefront of. And it has made a huge difference, both financially and strategically. We're really honing in on thesis and picking the winner and sticking with them and creating winners and really helping grow through board. Like back in the day, somebody could have a portfolio of 20 companies, and it's it's just not sustainable to be able to have impact.

You need to pick your companies and then help them grow. Did you change the compensation model too, or has Intel done anything from a compensations phantom carry or, bonuses that align with with enterprise value or anything else that would mirror the traditional VC community to support your longevity goals? Because you haven't had huge turnover like a lot of the other corporate VCs who are it seems like they're constantly in transition bringing new people in and and and other people going out.

What's your what's your view on sort of the compensation model that's been put in place for the team there? Yeah. I mean, just like every CVC, we've gone through iterations of this as, you know, different HR and comp and then people have come in. But, yeah, we feel like it is very important to be compensated based on the performance of your portfolio.

And, you know, so, yes, we have a phantom carry program where we are incentivized by, financial performance, but a big part of that is also being able to work with our business units and being an a team member and and things like that. Right? But, yes, we, by and large, are compensated based on performance. Yep.

Let's talk a little bit about, some announcements that happened in 2025 and sort of the the reversal of some of those some of those things. I mean, there's there's groups out there like, Samsung, that started bringing in independent capital. There's other groups that have gone through kind of a rebrand, and, or or sort of establish some independence with a branding strategy, whether it's Microsoft m 12 or SAP with Sapphire. I think what I what I thought I saw was Intel announcing that it was gonna spin out and become basically a complete standalone investment and then, a change in in in course correction.

Can you sort of walk us through what happened in 2025 for those who weren't paying attention or weren't as close to it as you were? Yeah. So beginning of last year, we announced the spin out. I was not involved in a significant amount of those conversations.

You know, I the discussion was around Intel as an LP and bringing in additional capital to expand the fund. We brought in Bu as our CEO very shortly after that. Those of you who know Lip Bu, he is an industry expert when it comes to venture capital through Walling Catalyst, through A and E, and through his other venture funds, he got to Intel and said, no way, this is a great resource for me. Why would I let this thing spin out?

And really felt like having the strategic value required keeping it in house. So he pretty quickly made the decision that he wanted to keep the the group in house, and, you know, it's great to have him here. He has a very well well connected network and is excited about venture. And if there's anybody who loves startups out there, it is Laboo.

So it's been great. So business as usual rolling along into 2026. As you think about sort of the industry sector focus, I mean, historically, it it appeared that most of the strategic investments were basically driven by how can we increase the demand for Intel's microprocessors. And so, you know, complementary hardware and software, investments.

Now we've got sort of probably that same level of strategy going forward, but this AI boom happening. Can you just talk a little bit about sort of how you're thinking about sort of industry sector focus going into 2026 for any, coinvestors that wanna invest alongside of Intel Capital or any entrepreneurs that are watching this and and wanna know sort of what what what's the priority this year? Yeah. Absolutely.

So you you're absolutely right. I mean, we have been watching the market. That's part of the value that we bring to Intel, right, and to any, you know, VC that any CVC brings to their parent corporation is being out there eyes and ears. Along with that, you know, Intel has gone through some changes and really focused.

So we have been looking at how do we make sure that we are focusing on the things where we think there's market opportunity as well as, you know, in the intersection of where it's strategically relevant for Intel. Again, we don't have to have business unit collaborations or agreements or anything like that, but we wanna be helpful investors. So we're really looking at spaces where we feel like we can bring in help and knowledge and all of that. So 2026, I'd say there's really three areas that we're focused on.

One is data center. They're all things AI infrastructure, data center cooling, power management, interconnects, all that. So that's one. The second one is silicon, which will always be near and dear to our heart where I invest, which is really around how do you make sure our factories are running.

It could be anything like architecture, chips. We have things like Salmanova in the the portfolio. And then build so let's see. Data center, Silicon, and AI, obviously.

So we have a team that's focused. We're really more focused on infrastructure. We have done some vertical software kind of AI focused, but a lot of that is really infrastructure focused in AI space. So with your focus on, with with the investment in Sabanova and and your you're probably paying attention to the AI chip space as we are, there's some interesting things happening in the cybersecurity space.

So we're not only looking at high performance computing, but we're looking at low power consumption and higher levels of security. Today, I'm not at the the, the home office. I'm at, world headquarters for Kornami, one of our portfolio companies that you may be, familiar with. They are spending a lot of time on, basically, encryption models and fully homomorphic encryption.

I'm wondering, can you talk a little bit more about I mean, obviously, we're all buzzing a bit from NVIDIA's $20,000,000,000 acquisition of Grok. Okay. What does that mean for their next acquisition? What does that mean for Intel?

You know, the world would like to know. And and so can you give us any visibility into how you're thinking about sort of the the AI chip space as it relates to sort of high performance computing, lower power consumption, and security? How are you thinking about, you know, that that as an industry sector? Yeah.

I mean, we are focused on all of those and do not my focus areas, so I can't speak super intelligently to thesis. But, yes, we have made investments in AI hardware. We've made investments in AI infrastructure. We have an entire security team and investor focused on security.

We've done several investments, even ones that have not been announced yet this year in the the security space. So all those high high priority for us moving forward. Awesome. Okay.

So I see my my colleague, Jan Gelmacher, is is on the line with us. I know that he and I will be having a sidebar with you, after this call to figure out who best to talk to. Yeah. Sounds good.

That'll be interesting. But, yeah, that that acquisition announcement of Grok obviously has implications for San Benova. It has implications for for Kornami. And so it's it's a it's a space that I think we're all gonna be paying close attention to over the next quarter.

Any other portfolio companies that you wanted to highlight? I saw Impact Nano and had some other very interesting, companies in in your LinkedIn profile. Any other portfolio companies that you wanted to highlight that sort of validate your enthusiasm for a particular industry sector? Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. So maybe I'll start with Impact Nano. So we have been focused on the material space for a long time.

Know, it's interesting. You go visit a materials plant and you walk in, and generally, of them are on the East Coast right near the Delaware River. And, you know, you walk in and there's reactors everywhere. It's kind of a a an interesting space.

Historically, nobody would have ever touched that. Now, you know, materials are becoming really, really important for being able to move forward with AI with, you know, really any manufacturing. And being able to synthesize materials really quickly, new novel materials is really important. And Impact Nano really has a capability.

They have great PhDs, a huge amount of PhDs on on board, and they will work directly with people like Intel, like Samsung, like others to synthesize very specific materials to use. And then generally, somebody else would bring that up to volume, but they really do have a really interesting capability of being able to synthesize really, really complicated materials, which is super exciting. Maybe just one other, Fabricate Labs. We made the investment in Fabricate three or four years ago.

They're an additive manufacturing company that is really using liquid copper at a pixel scale, really, or at a nanoscale to be able to build structures. We co invested in the very last round with NEA. We're both, you know, inside investors and led the round. We really are excited about that company creating custom cold plates.

They're working with most of the the all of the AI manufacturers to look at how do we make sure we keep these structures really cool as they go into the data center. So really exciting stuff coming out of them as well. You mentioned, data center infrastructure. You mentioned advanced materials.

I think you also mentioned inter interconnect technology. Are you looking at sort of, have you made investments in that space? Is there anything in particular? Yeah.

We made a bet. Astera Labs was one of our portfolio companies. They went public last year. We have Ellion in the portfolio.

We do we have I'm trying to remember if we've announced the other one, but we do have one other kind of more recent one. So, yes, we've looked at that both optical interconnects, pretty much the entire space. We it's all within our our purview. Okay.

We might we might need to follow-up separately on gig.io because it's another portfolio company that there may be some synergy, and I'd love to just to hear about your experiences so far. So thanks for mentioning that. Let's shift to syndication and how the VC community and the traditional corporate, VC community can best work with Intel Capital.

How are you thinking about is this, you're looking for co investors at all stages as corporate venture groups sort of move earlier in the financing food chain? Are you are you leading these deals and sort of going it alone in the early days and then bringing in, you know, partners later on? Are you engaging with the VC community as an LP to to broaden your your access to particular industry sectors or geography? Just talk a little bit about how you think about sort of the deployment of capital and who you're working with.

Yeah. I mean, we have great relationships with significant amount of financial VCs. We've co led rounds. We've followed rounds.

We've led rounds that they participated in. So we really are not picky about the model. We I think we really are focused on getting the right amount of capital and good capital around the table for our companies. And luckily, we're flexible enough that and we have a very, very flexible LP that is able to say, hey, do the right thing for the company.

So we've we've operated a lot of models. We have recently led a significant amount of the deals that we've done and generally later financial VCs will come in because we are we're series a, series b investor, but have made some earlier seed bets as well. So but at all of those stages, we work very closely with financial VCs. We love financial VCs.

There's a lot of really great people, and, you know, I'm on boards with several who I it's great. I learn a lot of a lot from them as we sit on boards together. And I think they really see a ton of value now in CVCs. You know, ten, fifteen years ago, a lot of the financial VCs were like, oh, they're bringing a CVC, they'll ask for weird terms, they're gonna ask for rophans, they're gonna wanna see all your technology.

And that is really not the case anymore. CVCs have really come to understand they need to be very plain vanilla terms. They need to not ask for anything outside the norm. They're, you know, they're getting equity in return just like a financial VC.

And so I think we're seeing more and more of that synergy between financial and CVCs just working really, really well and complementing each other. And we have not done fund to fund. We're not we have a couple times in the history of Intel. We're not great at it.

We don't have that core competency. You know, we really see direct investments as kind of the way that we have been successful. But with that said, we have relationships with a lot of the really early stage investors. So, you know, see deal flow through that, but we have not made a significant amount of LP investments.

Yep. That's helpful. Yeah. To your point about the rules of engagement, I've I've been impressed with the National Venture Capital Association, with the Kaufman Fellows, and with Global Corporate Venturing in the way they've shared information on sort of acceptable behavior in the venture ecosystem.

And I think they've done a good job of kind of training us all on how to collaborate together in an effective way and not ask for sort of things that are just not in the best interest of the company or the syndicate. And I think that's that's helped, VCs and corporate VCs work together in a little bit more of a cohesive way. Would you would you agree, or do you see it differently? No.

I absolutely I have seen very few companies over the last five years even that are being led by a CVC where that term sheet is not a MVCA standard term sheets. So you know? And we that's exactly our attorneys see a term sheet, and they know right off the bat if it's an MVCA, which is fantastic. I'm so glad they've done that and have those forms out and have, you know, language to start from, but very rarely do we see something that doesn't start with an MVCA standard in there.

Yep. Let's talk a little bit about any other trends that you're seeing with regard to corporate investor groups. What what, we talked a little bit about corporate venture groups going, sort of, you know, participating earlier in the financing food chain. Right?

No longer just a passive role at the series d or series e if the syndicate can't be filled out. Right? You know, now a more active role and and sort of a valued part of the syndicate at the series a and series b. Yeah.

You talked about Intel leading the way and sort of really, I think, breaking the mold a bit with regard to taking board seats. Right? Because that it was always a board observer. It was never a board seat.

Now, you know, these these corporates are stepping in. And I'd say the other consistent thing that I've seen is that instead of corporates, sort of disengaging if their strategy changes significantly or that they seem to be finding ways to participate in follow on rounds of financing and keeping their credibility intact as a quality syndicate player. Those are some of the things that I've seen. Anything else that you'd highlight with regard to kind of corporate venture trends?

No. I mean, I think you're right on. What's been interesting is, historically, I think CVCs have gotten kind of the reputation for being later. Like, they require business units to come in and work with that is not the case.

I've seen a couple seed stage deals where it's only CVCs in recently. And I think just the scope and ability, and I think it's just because now CVCs are a lot more ubiquitous and people understand and senior leadership knows why they're important and what value they can add. But there yes. The mandates are expanding, taking more board seats, being more active investors.

It's actually been great. For the portfolio companies, it's signal value once you have a corporate involved. Right? Because oftentimes, the investment community wants to see some level of industry endorsement around product market fit.

And once you have a once you have a corporate in there, then it sort of it validates, effectively the the market demand in that particular industry sector. So, I think it's it's it's it's been interesting to see that evolve. Let's talk a little bit about, sort of KPIs as you think about them. And and I realize that, you know, much you and and your team are tied to performance, but, so part of this obviously has to be around, financial value back to Intel Capital.

Are you also thinking about strategic value? Are you also thinking about, you know, the the the sustainable development goals out there and some of the impact aspects, you know, of being a good corporate citizen? Or is this, you know, really more of a pure financial model? Maybe just talk about strategy, returns impact.

How are you thinking about those things? Yeah. You know, I think financial returns by and large are really important. I think CVCs who say, oh, we're not at all, you know, focused on financial returns.

It maybe has a harsh reality coming. We we use the saying inside of Intel Capital that there's no, you know, financially or company that's not financially sound, that's strategically sound. Right? You need those companies to be the good companies to be strategically interesting to the company.

So that's part of our jobs as CVCs is vetting those out. We could probably spend two hours talking about KPIs, about the journeys we've been through looking at KPIs because this is hard. It's really hard. And maybe just a few examples.

One, thinking about working directly with the business unit, like, do you have a business unit grade you? Do you measure yourself by business unit contracts? And in that case, you know, every business unit has its own priorities and looking at our intel capital startups maybe isn't their top priority right at the moment. So does that impact how you look at a strategic deal?

You know, executive eyes on companies, we've also tried to figure out like, how are we getting companies in front of executive staff and making sure that they're well informed. You know, again, executives are really busy, and one of one quarter, they like, the meetings had to push. So this is really hard. I think everybody in the industry would say it is really hard to measure these things.

Where we've really landed is that we really see our value as being industry experts and eyes and ears for the company. So we've really tried to hone in on getting newsletters in front of ET, where it talks about who's getting funded, what are we seeing, what trends, what news, what companies have done what with who, like who signed partnerships, getting that information in front of them so that it really is kind of eyes and ears, as well as just coming in and saying, hey, here's all the companies that are out there getting funded and here's what they're doing and here's who's funding them.

Those are really the areas where I feel like we've had the most success kind of measuring that we're getting that information in front of people. And you know, that then generates those conversations that are really important. But I think when you start trying to grade things that are dependent on business units, it it gets it gets really tricky. It's helpful in KPIs.

And I know your your comment about research and kind of understanding what's going on in the ecosystem resonates with me. I think it was Ray Dalio who was talking about how he's he's get keeping smart on what was going on in the industry by forcing himself to write and publish on certain things. And I I find that with LinkedIn posts, you you sort of, like, dive in and go a little deeper, and and it keeps you up to speed on on what's going on in the industry. I wanna ask a question about sort of internal operations, though, as it relates to sort of artificial intelligence and how you're leveraging it inside.

Because I think you made a comment earlier that it it sort of made me think, know, are you are you you're not only using AI for research to get smart on a on an area that may be beyond certainly my technical depth and probably right in line with yours, but you're getting sort of and sharpened on on that. But, are you using it for other things? Are you using it for sourcing or for screening investments? Are there other ways in which you're you're thinking about embracing AI, for your venture platform?

Yeah. Insight. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Given I you know, that I work closely with our IT team. We have over the last two years, we've really been diligent in looking for tools that are out there, and they are slowly emerging. Like, we are starting to see some really interesting things.

We're doing a beta test for a certain AI platform that hopefully comes to market soon. But yeah, sourcing is a huge one. Like, how do you actually maintain those lists? It's so hard to keep in front of it, but the signals of what company has started hiring, you know, what company has hired a CMO to kind of make you know that they're ready to go to market.

That is one where, like I said, we're starting to see some tools. We actually have some homegrown tools that we've kind of been cobbling together for that, but that is one area that I feel like right for opportunity. Productivity just in general, right, you know, investment memos, it would be great if you can just upload all of the company documents and then say, here's the comps I wanna run. We're starting to see more and more being able to pull that all out of AI instead of spending a lot of time on that deal documents, reading, summarizing, comparing to NBCA, like spending less legal time going through and reviewing documents.

I think, you know, just analysis, being able to say, Hey, here's all my board decks. Like, tell me how this company is performing. What should I be asking in the board meetings? I think so many opportunities.

I think peep like, systems vendors are starting to really integrate those things in. And, man, it would be great at some point if there were a really robust VC platform that had all of these capabilities. So I'm Yeah. Still looking for that.

It's gonna be interesting to see how it all evolves because, yeah, the more you you embrace it, you feel like you've you've gone from kind of the the hammer to the nail gun. Everything just starts happening faster in in in more robust way. From a from a a a sourcing standpoint, I think it was Sony who said they're saying some somewhere between eight and ten thousand opportunities a year, they're just not getting through them all. Yeah.

Is is that is that an issue for Intel? If you were if were to highlight sort of one issue as it relates to sourcing or screening opportunities that that needs more attention in 2026 and 2027, is there anything that you would highlight? Yeah. I mean, I think we're all good at putting lists together.

I think the real question is where do you spend your time? Like, where is there a strong enough signal that you should spend your time talking to the company? I think I think that is where we're sourcing and, you know, AI systems are really gonna be helpful is where, like, what's that one company you need to, like, go after because, you know, it's revenue growth or it's hiring or whatever is signaling that they're doing really well. I think it's prioritizing time, getting things onto a list.

You know, you can run PitchBook. You can run Affinity Lists, all of that. But it's like, where do I where do I actually spend some time here? Yeah.

Let me ask you to forecast the future. And if you look a quarter or two out, at sort of a technology area that is highly investable that you're excited about, likely to make an investment in, in the next two quarters, for the, you know, for the benefit of the entrepreneurs and the other senior early stage VC firms that wanna work with you? Where where would you where would you guide us, to to look and spend time? Yeah.

As a deep tech semiconductor investor, I would say advanced packaging. I think we're used to be you know, we would look at packaging and we're like, yeah. Whatever is the cheap stuff on the back end. And now it's not the cheap end on the back.

It's expensive. It looks just like the front end of a manufacturing process. There's so that's interconnect space. It's, you know, being able to get materials and stacking and all of that integrated.

I think we're seeing a ton of opportunities in that space. It's super exciting. Awesome. Thanks for that.

Okay. We're gonna shift to the last portion of the program, the rapid fire q and a. You don't know this, I don't think. I was as part of my effort within the Kaufman Fellows, I, I actually did research projects on sort of professional development and how people are sort of not only operating in business, but how they're operating in life and how so I have one business question for you and one life question, if that's okay.

The business question is, sort of from a from an, a research standpoint, is there something that you're listening to or reading on a regular basis that just has has just captured you? You don't miss it because it's so good. Or or podcast or or, some some newsletter that you always pay attention to. Yeah.

I'm much more of a read it to internalize it. So I my Axios pro rata, strictly VC, you know, Wall Street Journal, those are the ones I'm definitely reading. Luckily, I run PR and marketing for Intel Capital alongside a colleague, and so I have lots of resources at my hands and our PR firm's sending me things on a very regular basis. So I live and die by, you know, reading through a bunch of that every single day.

That's awesome. I think and what I'm finding is that the the content's out there, to your point about finding signal on the stuff that's relevant, I almost need an AI engine there to to sort of screen the the waves of content. Yeah. Well, in the in the operation space, I am reading about our portfolio companies really regularly, what what's being said, who's where, what like, what's happening, making sure we have the pulse on all of that.

The last question on the on the personal front. So part of, the the thought leadership project that I did in Kaufman was applying business tools, to life. And so I ended up, basically presenting, for Kaufman in in not only Silicon Valley, but Dubai, Mexico City, and recently in London on this idea of sort of how you kick start your day, how you track your progress, how you sort of strategically plan your life. And and so I'm curious, is there anything that you do to kick start the day?

What you know, just sort of, you know, put yourself I'm I'm envisioning you, you know, pouring through the Wall Street Journal and and, you know, 10 other articles that have been sent over from your PR team, but but maybe there's something else in your No. I'm a morning person. I actually hate mornings. And I developed this habit about twenty years ago that if I don't get up and get a workout in, it's never gonna happen.

So I literally roll out of bed, go workout, and after about thirty minutes, then I can actually start processing information. So if I don't get you can probably tell from talking to me if I didn't get a workout in that morning. So that's how I that's how my brain gets going in the morning. Yeah.

We're very similar that way. I start off a little cloudy for these morning meetings. So if you don't get if if I don't get a workout in and clear out the clouds, I just find that you can sort of if your body is in shape, your brain seems to work a little bit better. Awesome.

Yeah. Well, on behalf of the team at SerraCap Impact Venture Capital and the Kaufman fellows, thanks to Jen Ard for spending a little bit of time with us today. Thanks, Jen. Yeah.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.