Jonah Cader

Jonah has always gravitated towards the intersection of innovation and impact. At Lightspeed, he leads growth and inflection-stage investments in AI, infrastructure, and frontier technology companies.

Previously, Jonah was a Principal at Valor Equity Partners, where he executed dozens of investments across artificial intelligence, defense, and other areas of deep tech. His experience spans research and strategy, academia and industry.

To founders, Jonah brings a perspective shaped by depth in both the technical and business sides of the technology ecosystem. As a strategy consultant and Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, Jonah advised semiconductor, fiber infrastructure, and big tech clients across the AI value chain. As an undergraduate he co-authored research at NeurIPS, and as a graduate student he unpacked the latest advances in AI during a moment of rapid acceleration. Jonah also worked at Google[x] on industrial robotics, and at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI).

“At Lightspeed, we have the privilege of partnering with founders who are pushing the boundaries of technology,” he says. “My job is to pull up a whiteboard, understand the details of what someone is building, and help put that technology in its market context.”

In part, Jonah’s path to venture capital began with an interest in neuroscience and the brain. That snowballed into a journey through computational neuroscience, computer vision, and ultimately artificial intelligence.

Jonah holds an MBA and an M.S. in Computer Science (with a specialization in AI) from Stanford, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and an ScB in Computational Neuroscience from Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude.

Outside of work, you can find him skiing and hiking in the mountains, cooking vibrant meals, reading over a cup of funky coffee, or recommending stacks of books with infectious enthusiasm. (Just ask for his latest AI reading list.)