Seligman Ventures Doubles Deployable Capital to $1 Billion as AI Infrastructure Investment Opportunity Accelerates

Venture platform reaches significant scale less than a year after launch as innovation accelerates across AI infrastructure, modern data centers and cybersecurity

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Seligman Investments ("Seligman"), the Silicon Valley-based technology investment firm led by Chief Investment Officer Paul Wick, today announced that it has doubled the amount of deployable capital available to Seligman Ventures from an initial $500 million to $1 billion less than a year after its launch.

The increase in available capital reflects Seligman Ventures' conviction in the scale of the current technology innovation cycle and the growing opportunity to invest in companies addressing AI infrastructure challenges, while providing additional flexibility to partner with exceptional founders, increase the number and size of investments, and support portfolio companies through multiple stages of growth.

Seligman Ventures launched in February 2026 with $500 million of deployable capital and initially expected to make six to eight investments during its first 12 months. Led by Managing Partners Umesh Padval and Ashish Kakran, and CFO and Operating Partner Eddie Ackerman, the firm has invested in more than 14 companies since launch across its core focus areas, reflecting both the pace of innovation and the depth of opportunities emerging across AI infrastructure, modern data center hardware and cybersecurity.

"The opportunities we are seeing across compute, networking, connectivity, power, thermal management, cybersecurity and AI software infrastructure have exceeded our expectations," said Umesh Padval, Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures. "Our thesis-driven approach, operating experience, technical knowledge, CXO network and ability to make investment decisions quickly have allowed us to partner with some of the most ambitious founders and companies. Increasing our deployable capital to $1 billion gives us the opportunity to invest in category-defining startups as well as support our current portfolio companies."

The portfolio includes SambaNova, Lumilens, Eliyan, Upscale and Velaura AI, addressing challenges spanning AI inference, optical connectivity, high-speed interconnects, ultra-low-power AI compute and Physical AI. It also includes Cognichip, EPIC Microsystems, and Exaforce, among others. Seligman Ventures has also secured six board of director seats and three board observer seats across its portfolio.

"Increasing the capital available to Seligman Ventures reflects our confidence in both the opportunity ahead and the team we have assembled, as well as the venture portfolio we have constructed," said Paul Wick, Chief Investment Officer of Seligman Investments. "Umesh, Ashish Kakran and Eddie Ackerman have built significant momentum in a short period of time, and Seligman Ventures extends our long-standing technology investing platform by allowing us to partner with innovative companies from the startup phase all the way to the public markets. We believe that Seligman’s combination of deep technology research and expertise across private to public market investing provides us, and the founders and companies we invest in, a differentiated perspective as the technology landscape evolves."

What makes this investment cycle different is that the constraints are constantly shifting. As AI systems scale, solving one challenge often exposes another, from compute and power to data movement and thermal management. This dynamic is creating opportunities for new companies across the infrastructure stack, particularly for founders solving difficult technical problems that become increasingly important at scale. Seligman Ventures focuses on partnering with these technical founders early and supporting them as they build companies capable of addressing the infrastructure challenges created by the next generation of AI.

At the same time, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important as AI applications move into production and enterprises adopt AI more broadly. Securing AI agents and providing guardrails for agentic workflows are critical pain points as organizations seek to deploy AI safely and at scale. AI is also making security platforms faster and more cost-efficient, while enabling higher-fidelity security alerts that help organizations identify and respond to threats more effectively.

The emergence of Physical AI is also creating new infrastructure requirements for robotics, autonomous systems and other intelligent machines, where highly efficient compute must operate under fundamentally different power and thermal constraints. Seligman Ventures is also focused on the emerging opportunity around AI model labs and world models that will enable Physical AI, where advances in models and infrastructure will increasingly converge.

Seligman Ventures is part of Seligman's broader technology investing platform, which combines decades of experience investing across public and private markets. Seligman is part of Columbia Threadneedle Investments' alternatives business and manages approximately $48 billion of public and private market technology and healthcare investments across mutual funds, hedge funds and separately managed accounts.1

About Seligman Ventures
Seligman Ventures is the venture capital arm of Seligman Investments, focused on backing technology companies from early stage through pre-IPO across AI and cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and modern data-center hardware. Led by Managing Partners Umesh Padval and Ashish Kakran, and CFO and Operating Partner Eddie Ackerman, the firm brings together deep operating, investing, and public-markets expertise to partner with founders building category-defining companies. For more information, please visit seligman.com.

About Columbia Threadneedle Investments
Columbia Threadneedle Investments is a leading global asset manager that provides a broad range of investment strategies and solutions for individual, institutional and corporate clients around the world. With 2,200 people, including 550 investment professionals, based in North America, Europe and Asia, we manage and advise $759 billion of assets across developed and emerging market equities, fixed income, asset allocation solutions and alternatives.2

Columbia Threadneedle Investments is the global asset management group of Ameriprise Financial, Inc. (NYSE: AMP). For more information, please visit columbiathreadneedleus.com.

Columbia Threadneedle Investments (Columbia Threadneedle) is the global brand name of the Columbia and Threadneedle group of companies.

Seligman Investments and Seligman Ventures are offering brands of Columbia Management Investment Advisers, LLC.

1,2 As of June 30, 2026

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© 2026 Columbia Management Investment Advisers, LLC. All rights reserved.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260928624977/en/

Press Contacts

For Seligman Investments and Seligman Ventures:
Mike Zucconi at BAM
[email protected]
609.516.0209

For Columbia Threadneedle Investments:
Carlos Melville
[email protected]
617.897.9384

Source: Seligman Investments

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