Priyanka Somrah

Principal @Work_Bench, leading seed investments in companies across cloud & AI infrastructure and security. Blog:

[Priyanka Somrah @psomrah]

🚀 I'm excited to share that we’ve raised @Work_Bench Fund IV, a $160M fund to back the next generation of enterprise software founders at Seed.

🤗 I joined @Work_Bench just under six years ago during Fund II. I was drawn to the idea of working closely with technical founders building real enterprise-grade systems. Durable infrastructure, developer tools, and the critical layers most people never see but everything depends on.

👯 Since then, I’ve had the privilege of partnering with teams at @CockroachDB, @FireHydrant, @authzed, @runhouse_ , @prequel_dev, https://t.co/nfpHI2ebMv and others who are rethinking how software is built, deployed, and secured. These founders have a deep understanding of the problem, a clear view of what is missing, and the technical and commercial instincts to build what the market needs. We’ve been proud to support them from the start.

📈 Fund IV marks a meaningful step forward for our team cc: @fendien, @jerseejess, @kelleymak, @DanielChesley & Patricia Arcenas-Tope and a continuation of how we have always worked.

We do not take a high volume approach to investing, and we do not follow hype. We invest with conviction, work closely with the teams we back, and stay involved well beyond our first check.

💡That means being early on GTM, refining positioning and messaging, iterating on pricing, and supporting those first critical hires.

🧠 Much of this thinking is shaped by the research I share in my newsletter, The Data Source, where I cover themes across infrastructure, developer tools, and enterprise GTM. See linked in comments below.

🙌 A huge thank you to the founders, practitioners and broader NYC technical community who have helped shape our theses, pressure-test our conviction, and push our thinking on what the next generation of enterprise software should look like.

📬 If you are building, advising, or exploring ideas in infrastructure or developer tools, whether as a founder or as part of the broader community, I would love to connect!

[Evil Martians @evilmartians]

This is the episode all early-stage devtool founders should listen to.

We were very lucky to have @amirrustam as a guest in our podcast, Dev Propulsion Labs. He's a partner at @Firestreakvc with many devtools in his portfolio, including Daytona, ElectricSQL, and Lovable. Amir is also the person who coined the term "developer experience."

In this episode, we discuss:

- Amir's background and how he went from working at NASA and SpaceX to becoming an investor
- The things he looks for in a founder
- What makes a founder stand out from others
- The importance of the product and revenue metrics at an early stage
- How to write your pitch deck when asking for funding
- The current market state and the growth of vibe coding and agentic engineering
- What great developer experience looks like in 2026

Link to episode below.

[Paul Vann @pjvann]

last year i won $25k in @OpenAI credits, and figured I’d put them to a good cause. With supply chain attacks becoming much more common, the frequency and speed at which we vet new software versions becomes critical.

sharing ghost, by Validia. Ghost detects changes every 30-seconds to 545 different packages, passing their diff to an agent built on the OpenAI agents SDK each time there’s a change.

Check out the link below

[Jonathan Lehr @fendien]

I'm excited to announce that @Work_Bench is leading Built AI’s $6M Seed round, with participation from @LererHippeau and Timber Grove Ventures.

Commercial real estate is a multi-trillion $$ asset class still running on spreadsheets, outdated tools, and PDFs. It's time for a change.

The Product
Built AI is an AI-powered financial modeling and decision-support platform that analyzes investment opportunities in minutes instead of weeks, with transparent assumptions, line-by-line auditability, and a user-friendly interface that’s quick to learn.

Why now
GenAI is the unlock. For the first time, extraction from OMs, rent rolls, and spreadsheets is accurate enough to generate instant financial models.

This is the workflow shift the industry has been waiting for.

Traction
The platform is already used by Howard Hughes, CBRE, LondonMetric, and many others, and investors have used the platform to analyse $70B of investment opportunities over the past year.

If you’re still under­writing like it’s 2010…it’s time to level up.

Let’s go Built AI 👊🔥

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

Tomorrow! If you're in SF and love enterprise software, we'd love to see you there

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

Luma: https://t.co/xboWQCNynR

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes…especially in enterprise software

Hosting an Enterprise Software Trivia Night with @_shreya_s on December 1st in SF! If you’re curious about how the iconic software companies were built & enjoy studying the greats, you’ll love this event.

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

How we @Work_Bench are thinking about the future of the AI application layer, given recent moves by Cursor and Cognition in building their own models. If you’re building a full-stack application company, would love to hear from you!

cc @DanielChesley

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

New form of leverage: not just doing a piece of work, but creating the underlying playbook such that a web of agents can complete it at scale.

If the magic of code is write once, distribute infinitely, this enables a similar dynamic. Unlocking “zero marginal cost of doing”

[Matt Turck @mattturck]

Turns out this generation of AI startups is very bi-coastal, leveraging the best of SF *and* NYC, often from very early on (seed)

Now, if the answer to “SF or NYC?” is “both”, what are we going to argue about on this app

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

Thrilled to collaborate with @psomrah on a new monthly initiative at @Work_Bench - The State of Agentic Systems! Every month, we'll share some of most interesting things we're seeing in the agentic infra universe, from research papers and blog posts to launches. It's a privilege to be at the frontier when a new class of software is emerging (which hence begets the infra to render it possible), excited for this to be an expression of curiosity and exploration

Link to the July issue in the replies!

[Jonathan Lehr @fendien]

Enterprise AI can’t just dazzle in demos - it has to deliver in production.

Nowhere is this truer than in Financial Services.

That’s why at @Work_Bench we’re thrilled to lead the $6M Seed in Artian AI.

AI agents. Built for mission-critical finance workflows.

[Jonathan Lehr @fendien]

@GrantM Ohhh nice!

Some suggestions:

- @bobbytables (@FireHydrant)
- @JacobMoshenko (@authzed)
- @DonnyGreenberg (@runhouse_)
- @yevgenypats (@cloudqueryio)
- @asklyndon (https://t.co/JHtau22lKf)
- @VladAIonescu (@EarthlyTech)
- @shipyardbuild

All would be awesome on the show 😎

[Jonathan Lehr @fendien]

🚨 Big news: We’ve raised $160M for @Work_Bench Fund IV to back Seed-stage founders with massive enterprise ambitions.

Enterprise is in our DNA and with Fund IV, we’re quadrupling down.👇

[Priyanka Somrah @psomrah]

@Work_Bench @fendien @jerseejess @kelleymak @DanielChesley Subscribe to The Data Source here: https://t.co/yROYQKtrxO

[Priyanka Somrah @psomrah]

🚀 I'm excited to share that we’ve raised @Work_Bench Fund IV, a $160M fund to back the next generation of enterprise software founders at Seed.

🤗 I joined @Work_Bench just under six years ago during Fund II. I was drawn to the idea of working closely with technical founders building real enterprise-grade systems. Durable infrastructure, developer tools, and the critical layers most people never see but everything depends on.

👯 Since then, I’ve had the privilege of partnering with teams at @CockroachDB, @FireHydrant, @authzed, @runhouse_ , @prequel_dev, https://t.co/nfpHI2ebMv and others who are rethinking how software is built, deployed, and secured. These founders have a deep understanding of the problem, a clear view of what is missing, and the technical and commercial instincts to build what the market needs. We’ve been proud to support them from the start.

📈 Fund IV marks a meaningful step forward for our team cc: @fendien, @jerseejess, @kelleymak, @DanielChesley & Patricia Arcenas-Tope and a continuation of how we have always worked.

We do not take a high volume approach to investing, and we do not follow hype. We invest with conviction, work closely with the teams we back, and stay involved well beyond our first check.

💡That means being early on GTM, refining positioning and messaging, iterating on pricing, and supporting those first critical hires.

🧠 Much of this thinking is shaped by the research I share in my newsletter, The Data Source, where I cover themes across infrastructure, developer tools, and enterprise GTM. See linked in comments below.

🙌 A huge thank you to the founders, practitioners and broader NYC technical community who have helped shape our theses, pressure-test our conviction, and push our thinking on what the next generation of enterprise software should look like.

📬 If you are building, advising, or exploring ideas in infrastructure or developer tools, whether as a founder or as part of the broader community, I would love to connect!

[Priyanka Somrah @psomrah]

Read more about our story here: https://t.co/9qS36ItsSr

[Prequel @prequel_dev]

🚨 Dropping soon: Two new open source projects to spot bugs, misconfigs & other pitfalls — before they bite. Host: Kelsey Hightower + @snowboardvstree.

🧠 No pitch. No slides. Just code, Q&A, and instant repo access. ✅ Tricks you can use today. Be first in. #reliability

[Proby Shandilya @ProbyShandilya]

One way to think about application <> infrastructure cycles is

Applications are the demand side that “demands” infra — in the times where a new technological seam opens up, many at the frontier experiment and try to build new things. The demand outstrips the supply.

Almost like pulling supply into existence, the market is equilibrated by work on the supply side to meet the new shape of demand. Deep systems experts figure out how to take the work that’s done at the frontier and democratize it. Hadoop came from Yahoo, MapR/Kubernetes from Google, Kafka from LinkedIn, Chronosphere from Uber, etc. All these emerged from local instances of demand outpacing supply and a shortage having to be resolved.

[Daniel Chesley @DanielChesley]

Last week I hosted another https://t.co/796ykAPSSf event and it was a blast!

People joined from companies like @AnthropicAI , @PalantirTech, @tryramp, @datadoghq, @DecagonAI, and many more.

So far, community members have already:
🤝 Met their cofounders (both technical & sales-driven)
📈 Signed design partners & closed multi-year contracts with customers
💰 Raised pre-seed & seed rounds from top VCs & angels

https://t.co/vho6gcSmhE is just getting started and we’re planning events like MCP hackathons, technical founder AMAs, exited founders dinners, and more. Reach out to me if you'd like to collaborate / join our events

Remember to sign up at https://t.co/796ykAPSSf to meet your cofounder and stay in the loop!

[Priyanka Somrah @psomrah]

Here for biggest bash of the year @AntithesisHQ #BugBash2025 🌸🏙️