Ravi Mhatre

A founding partner at Lightspeed

Ravi Mhatre is a partner and co-founder of Lightspeed Venture Partners, based in Menlo Park, California. Lightspeed's team page says he has spent more than 25 years helping build the firm, its enterprise practice and its portfolio, and describes the firm as a premier global technology investment firm. A bio supplied for the Milken Institute Global Conference 2024 calls him a founding partner with a global leadership role and says he has worked with founders from early stage through IPO or acquisition.^[1][2]

From engineering to investing

Before venture capital, Mhatre worked at Silicon Graphics, as a management consultant at Booz Allen, and as a software engineer at a biotech instrument manufacturer. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, a bachelor's degree in economics and an MBA, all at Stanford University. That mix of engineering and business training shows up in the enterprise-infrastructure and security bets for which the firm is known.^[1][2]

Founding the firm

Wikipedia records that Lightspeed was founded in 2000 by Barry Eggers, Christopher Schaepe, Ravi Mhatre and Peter Nieh, who had worked together at Weiss, Peck and Greer and attended Stanford. The firm opened its first international office in Tel Aviv in 2006, began an India practice in 2008 and opened in Singapore in 2022. Its funds have grown from about $1 billion in 2014 to roughly $4.2 billion across three funds in 2020 and about $7.1 billion in 2022, according to the same entry.^[4]

Enterprise and infrastructure bets

Mhatre's stated focus spans enterprise IT, consumer, life sciences and blockchain. His bio names Anduril, AppDynamics, Guardant, MuleSoft, Natera, Nutanix, Offchain Labs, Rubrik, ThoughtSpot and Zscaler among companies he has partnered with, and his profile also lists Riverbed Technology, SailPoint, Qubole, Exabeam, Yugabyte and Glean.^[1][2]

Wikipedia's account of firm-level milestones gives context for several of those names: Lightspeed led the Series A of Riverbed in 2002, the Series B of MuleSoft in 2007 (acquired by Salesforce for $6.5 billion after a 2017 IPO), the Series A of AppDynamics in 2008 (acquired by Cisco for $3.7 billion in 2017) and the Series A of Nutanix in 2010. It also led the Series C of Guardant Health in 2014 and the Series A of Rubrik the same year. Those deals are credited to the firm; Lightspeed's page lists Mhatre as a partner on the companies named in his bio.^[4][1]

Newer areas: AI, defense and frontier science

The investments listed on his profile now include Anthropic, Neuralink, Thinking Machines, Character.AI, Skild AI, Helsing, Periodic Labs, Fireworks AI, Temporal and Helion, which indicates a move into AI models, robotics, defense and energy alongside the firm's traditional software focus. Lightspeed says it made its first AI investment in 2012 and has invested more than $5.5 billion in 165 AI-native companies, mostly at seed, Series A and Series B.^[1][3]

The 2025 fundraise

In December 2025 Lightspeed announced that it had closed more than $9 billion in committed capital across six vehicles: Fund XV-A ($980 million), Fund XV-B ($1.2 billion), Select VI ($1.8 billion), Opportunity Fund III ($3.3 billion) and Co-Investment Fund I ($600 million), plus $1.25 billion in single-investor vehicles formed in 2025. Mhatre, quoted as Founder and Partner, called AI the most transformative technology shift in a generation and said the firm had been investing behind that conviction for years.^[3]

Recognition, boards and public appearances

Lightspeed's page says Forbes named Mhatre its top dealmaker on the Midas List in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2025 and 2026. He serves on the Stanford Business School Trust advisory board and is a former board member of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and The Indus Entrepreneurs Silicon Valley. On May 6, 2024 he spoke on a Milken Institute Global Conference panel on market impacts in the digital age; Milken notes that speakers write their own bios and the institute does not independently verify them.^[1][2]

Why he matters

Mhatre is one of the founding investors of a firm that has stayed independent for 25 years while expanding across the US, Israel, India and Singapore. His record in infrastructure software, and the firm's repeated large fundraises, make him a reference point for how enterprise-technology venture investing has adapted to the AI cycle.^[1][3][4]

On The Executive List

Ravi Mhatre is ranked No. 77 on The Executive List (October 2026) in the Chief Financial Officers discipline. The ranking reflects The Executive Review's own editorial Trending Score; it is not an outside award, and placement on the list is never sold. View the October 2026 edition.