Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Venture capital firm AAF announced today that it has closed a $55M early-stage hybrid fund, The Axis Fund, to invest in emerging managers (Funds I and II) and their most promising underlying portfolio companies at Pre-Seed to Pre-IPO. The Axis Fund is AAF’s fourth vintage and catapults the firm’s assets-under-management (AUM) to $250M.
Since 2016, AAF has made 138 direct investments and backed 39 unique emerging managers across 43 fund vintages. To-date, 5 companies have become unicorns including Jasper, Current, Flutterwave, Drata and Hello Heart and 20 companies have exited including TruOptik, MoneyLion, Even Financial, Portfolium, Prodigy, BetterView, Lightyear, Trim, HeyDoctor and Medumo for a combined enterprise value of $2B.
AAF general partners: Kyle Hendrick and Omar Darwazah.
In addition, AAF has backed companies such as KarmaCheck, Pelago, Sure, Shippabo and Nitra with initial entry checks at their respective Pre-Seed, Seed or Series A rounds.
The Axis Fund is anchored by Mubadala Capital, family offices from the US, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), GPs from prominent US-based asset managers, a multi-billion-dollar AUM venture capital firm based in the US and a publicly traded company.
The fund’s strategy is predicated on leveraging the emerging manager Limited Partner (LP) checks to access gated private market data on early-stage companies. This unique data licensing approach provides privileged access to proprietary, non-public deal flow and insights not available through platforms like Crunchbase or CB Insights.
To-date, The Axis Fund has already made investments in 25 Pre-Seed and Seed funds and 5 direct investments into early-stage and early-growth companies. The underlying managers have a coverage of approximately 800 venture-backed companies that were formed during the 2021- 2025 cycle.
General Partner and Managing Director Kyle Hendrick commented, “Over the past decade, we have found that the richest dataset of private market companies at the earliest stages of their formation is accessed only through LP checks in emerging managers. With The Axis Fund, we are combining our fund-of-funds investing track record along with our Seed track record under one fund umbrella to generate the best risk-adjusted return for our LPs.”
General Partner and Managing Director Omar Darwazah commented, “Our two-pronged investing strategy allows our LPs to access a beta product, through the indexing of emerging managers, and an alpha product, through the picking of companies to back at the early stage. This strategy allows us to identify signal from noise and increase our probability of backing outliers – fund returners, 10x cash-on-cash returning companies and Seed to Unicorn investments.”
Suzanne Fletcher, Founder and General Partner of Zelda Ventures commented, “the AAF team has been an exceptional partner to Zelda Ventures, both as an investor in the firm’s Fund 1 and as a collaborative co-investor. They not only supported us early but have also continued to engage meaningfully, from investing alongside us in Okahu to flagging opportunities like Originalis. AAF’s approach of backing managers and then investing alongside them truly delivers on their mission to build enduring partnerships.”
Zaid Rahman, Founder and CEO of Flex, commented, “AAF has been an exceptional partner to us. They began building a relationship with me and the company nearly two years before investing. Flex was originally sourced through their LP check in 305 Ventures, and since then, AAF has participated in our Series A and every subsequent financing round. We’re excited to continue working with them as both capital formation and business development partners, leveraging their global LP network and deep connectivity across the MENA region.”
AAF previously raised a $25 million Fund I in 2017 and a $39 million Fund II in 2021. In addition, the firm ran a proprietary $32 million fund-of-funds investment vehicle in 2017 for a select number of its LPs. AAF is exposed to over 5% of the world’s private market unicorns through both its direct investing and fund-of-funds platform.
AAF’s previous fund vintages rank in the top decile in terms of Net TVPI for their respective vintages as compared against Cambridge Associates and Carta’s Venture Capital benchmarking data.
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About AAF Management Ltd.
AAF Management Ltd. (AAF) is a leading early-stage venture capital firm focused on Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A stage technology companies in North America as well as global emerging managers. Since late 2016, the firm invested in 138 venture-backed portfolio companies across fintech, healthcare, consumer, enterprise software and deep tech as well as 39 emerging managers globally across 43 fund vintages. The firm currently has $250 million in assets under management.
