Anaiy Somalwar is an entrepreneur and investor with background in EECS, Applied Math, and Business from UC Berkeley’s M.E.T. Program. He began his career working at VC-backed startups and research labs such as Berkeley AI Research, SiMa.ai, University of Washington, Respeecher, and Chess.com, where he published papers in over five IEEE conferences, reviewed for IEEE Access, and chaired the recent result track of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference.
Most recently, Anaiy worked as venture capitalist at Pear VC and Foundation Capital, sourcing over $50M of deal value through startups such as Brutus AI (acquired), TeachShare, Advex AI, and Poppin and making personal investments in OpenAI and Perplexity. Anaiy also co-founded a startup with over $1M in revenue and joined the board of AI Entrepreneurs at Berkeley. Anaiy received distinctions as an Atlas Fellow, Masason Fellow, and National Master of Chess.
