Arash Afrakhteh

Partner at (pre-seed & seed) | Ex-Founder | Focused on AI/ML | Modern Data Stacks | Cloud Tooling & Infra | Developer Tooling | Security

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

Congrats @nerdwillz @feng_2000! @ShiplightAI automated testing and verification is removing an important bottleneck in AI powered software development! 🚀

[Will Zhao @nerdwillz]

🚀 Today we’re coming out of stealth and unveiling @ShiplightAI, the most reliable AI-native testing platform that scales E2E test coverage with near-zero maintenance.

For years, software teams have accepted a painful tradeoff: Move fast and risk breaking production, or slow down under the weight of brittle tests and endless QA maintenance.

AI-assisted coding makes this gap even wider. Modern teams ship faster than ever. Products change daily. Yet testing is still stuck in a world of scripts, manual upkeep, and fragile workflows that collapse the moment your UI changes, making testing the new bottleneck.

Feng and I built @ShiplightAI to make testing a force multiplier for modern software teams. As AI accelerates coding, autonomous, reliable testing closes the loop from code to confident releases.

Our goal is simple but ambitious:
Make test coverage effortless, and teams can ship with confidence anytime.

This mission is personal for us. Throughout our careers, we’ve always been obsessed with building high-quality software that lasts.

We’re already trusted by some of the most innovative, fast-moving teams. Seeing Shiplight earn their trust and transform their release cycles is the strongest signal that we’re building something real.

We’re grateful to be backed by Pear VC (Shravan Reddy, Mar Hershenson) and Embedding VC (Roger Luo), along with incredible angels like Oliver Jung.

We’re just getting started, and we can’t wait to partner with more teams who are building fast and care deeply about quality.
👉 Book a demo: https://t.co/t2b2xwVL6R

#AI #SoftwareEngineering #QAAutomation #ShiplightAI #AgenticAI

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

Proud of what these teams have accomplished before and during PearX.

From enterprise, to infrastructure, energy and consumer, they are tackling big problems and markets.

Among them, next-gen: numerical foundational model, ERP implementation, kubernetes for your AI, RL Env 👇

[Pejman Nozad @pejmannozad]

https://t.co/k4D3632wvn

[Kathleen Estreich @kloughlin]

💡 Pricing is one of the most powerful & most overlooked GTM levers.

In reality, it should be a dynamic driver of growth.

In the AI era, old pricing tools can’t keep up.

Speed, intelligence, adaptability are the new bar.

That’s why @pearvc is backing @spyrikaras & Dealops.

[Mohammad Norouzi @CVPR @mo_norouzi]

Happy to share that Ideogram raised $80 million in series A funding to help people become more creative through generative AI! Thanks to @a16z for leading the round and @Redpoint, @pearvc, @IndexVentures, @svangel for participating!

Ideogram 1.0 will improve considerably soon!

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

@mo_norouzi @a16z @Redpoint @pearvc @IndexVentures @svangel Proud to be partnering with you! Congratulations!

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

Congratulations to @pearvc portfolio @ideogram_ai
for raising a $80M series A and the release of a truly magical text to-image model!

[Ideogram @ideogram_ai]

Introducing Ideogram 1.0: the most advanced text-to-image model, now available on https://t.co/Xtv2rRbQXI!

This offers state-of-the-art text rendering, unprecedented photorealism, exceptional prompt adherence, and a new feature called Magic Prompt to help with prompting.

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

Thank you @jowyang for joining us and. We loved having you and all the great guests joining us for our SF Studio Opening. Looking forward to having a vibrant founder and founder supporter community at our SF and Menlo Park Studios.

[Jeremiah Owyang @jowyang]

Hundreds of startups will birth out of this space.

Congrats to @pearvc ‘s grand opening of a massive office in SF for founders. 200 desks —one of the largest venture spaces in the Bay Area.

There’s a line down the block to get into the opening event. Thanks @arasha for the warm welcome.

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

I can't wait to hack alongside our founders at our new space. Founders, we have you covered, either in SF or Menlo Park!

[Pejman Nozad @pejmannozad]

We are excited to announce Pear SF Office: a 30,000 sq/ft state of the art office with 240 desks and 20 conference rooms, building a community for tech builders and entrepreneurs. @pearvc

[Kevin Xu @kevinxu]

PearX’s W24 cohort kicks off in February. Apply here: https://t.co/Q5j1Wy72Ah

If you want an investment partner that's truly there for you in the early days and knows the difficulties of early 0 to 1, can't recommend Pear VC enough!

[Vivien Ho @VivHo]

5⃣days left to apply or nominate for the Round 1 deadline of our @PearVC Female Founder Circle for Engineers. Interviews are rolling.

For 12 weeks, future female engineer entrepreneurs learn from successful female technical leaders from SaaS to Climate:

✨Kendra Kuhl, CTO and CoFounder of @twelve_co2
✨@TamarBercovici, VP of Engineering at @Box
✨@yinyinwu, CEO and Founder of @pulley

We're excited to improve the chances of successfully funded female founders and create a community for entrepreneurially minded female engineers.

Learn more: https://t.co/KUuGKiI2pP

#womeninengineering #femalefounders #womeninbusiness

[Pear VC @pearvc]

Congratulations to @TrustVanta, @Xilis_Inc, and @OrbyAI for the well deserved recognition on the @BusinessInsider list of the most promising startups of 2023. We're proud to be your early backers! 🚀

[Pejman Nozad @pejmannozad]

Not possible!
@arashf @Dropbox

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

Excited for even closer collaboration with @arpans!

[Pear VC @pearvc]

We're thrilled to share that, after spending the last year as a Visiting Partner with us, @arpans has officially joined Pear as a Partner. Read more about Arpan on our blog today! https://t.co/3QMrpPZeGj

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

Founders at work before demo day starts!

[Pear VC @pearvc]

DEMO DAY IS LIVE! Join us at https://t.co/Daof6VoSuC! Pitches starting shortly.

[Vivien Ho @VivHo]

amazing Super Demo Day with @joewhaley and @BuildInception 🙌🏼 fun to host at our @pearvc home 🍐 and look forward to hosting many more!

[Pejman Nozad @pejmannozad]

Pear VC is busier than ever and we couldn’t be more excited about the seed landscape.
Orby AI is the latest @pearvc seed investment that came out of stealth! Take a look.

https://t.co/yPMuAhigSd

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

I am so excited for @OrbyAI to be out of stealth today! Robust automation of tasks are at hand so that enterprises can focus on innovating on their workflows and have AI discover and repeat them!

[Pear VC @pearvc]

Today is a big day: @OrbyAI is out of stealth and we're pleased to announce that we co-led their $4.5M seed round. Orby is using #GenerativeAI to automate repetitive and mundane tasks. Go Orby! https://t.co/3hE0nudjel

[Malinda Coler @mmcolerSF]

@DominicMadori @ripple_ventures
@pearvc
@CRV
@NimaCapital
@SusaVentures
@davefontenot
@neotribevc
@FoundationFund
@Base10Partners
@MenloVentures
@RadicalVentures

@cerebral_valley who’d I miss?

Best #AI investors are the ones getting to know us at hackathons, demo days, and more

[Arash Afrakhteh @arasha]

We are very lucky to have @joandthezhus leading all things PearX! Our founders are getting even better support and I am looking forward to all of our collaborations!

[Pear VC @pearvc]

We recently welcomed @joandthezhus to the Pear team to lead all things PearX. PearX is our early stage bootcamp for founders. In the 14-week program, we partner with founders from their earliest days and help them go from 0 to 1. https://t.co/xnZOIll0lW

[Pear VC @pearvc]

We're excited for #EarthDay2023! 🌎🌲🌊☀️To celebrate, we spoke with David Bromberg, Co-founder and CEO of Pearl Street Technologies. Their mission is to accelerate the decarbonization of the grid. Learn more about what they're doing!
https://t.co/BZD5A5eu2k