Mary d’Onofrio leaves Bessemer Venture Partners for CrossLink Capital

D’Onofrio will direct the crossover fund of Crosslink, focusing on the investments of the B-Plus series in vertical software of AI and infrastructure.

“The world is changing so quickly thanks to AI,” said D’Onofrio when he is reached Fortune. “I think there is an interesting opportunity to have a fun strategy that takes advantage of the dislocation that AI is creating … to invest both in new AI native companies, and even to extend the track of existing companies that might need to rethink their architecture or market in the context of that world that changes quickly.”

D’Onofrio spent seven years in Bessemer, becoming a member in 2021. His Bessemer portfolio included anthropic, Canva, teleportation, hashicorp, toast and wrapbook. In Crosslink, it will seek “less agreements of greater concicification”, since the assessments of AI remain high.

When it comes to valuations, “a history of two cities is still a bit,” said D’Onofrio. “Some AI companies are being incredibly highly valued. But the justification is that there are massive TAM (total directable markets) that will be captured. It can be argued that there are many services that will be added to historically restricted software to expand even more.”

Crosslink, whose last and present wallet includes Betterup, Postmates and Flume Health, recently the news made in the middle of the successful IPO of Fintech Startup Chime. The firm led Chime A Series A in 2014 and was among Chime’s largest shareholders (with a participation of approximately 9.5%) as the company became public this month. D’Onofrio declined to comment on Chime.

Crosslink, said D’Onofrio, has a triple strategy of company in an initial stage, growth and public investment.

“It allows us to be quite skilled in terms that the reticulation services of companies. Therefore, for our immediate success stories, you can attract different capital groups and continue investing. And for those who take more time, or who can see success and need a few years of finding their way, the company could really be patient; they can really invest in the entire cycle of life.”