AI Founder, Edge Hardware

Forum's Venture Studio brings together ambitious people, brilliant ideas, and capital to build B2B SaaS businesses from 0 to 1. In addition to capital and an idea, founders receive access to investor networks, fundraising support, and resources needed to build transformational companies. The AI Studio has launched 17 companies since 2023 and is launching 7 more in 2026.

What We're Looking At:

Edge AI scaled before edge AI got standards. Every NPU vendor built proprietary toolchains, and none of them interoperate. A team shipping to Qualcomm, Apple, Intel, and MediaTek is not writing one codebase. They are maintaining several, each with its own optimization pass every time something changes. No neutral runtime exists when multiple AI workloads compete on the same chip. Vendor lock-in is the bottleneck, and the company that removes it captures outsized value. Forum AI Studio is looking for a Founder exploring any of these themes:

• Edge runtime and compiler abstraction across heterogeneous NPUs
• Intelligent inference routing for mixed NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, and custom ASIC fleets
• Unified operational planes for edge and on-prem hardware cost and placement visibility
• And more!

Maybe you've shipped the same model to five NPU targets and felt the toolchain tax. Maybe you've built inference infrastructure for mixed hardware fleets and know where placement and cost decisions break down. That's who we build with.

Forum derisks and accelerates the Founder path by:

• A $250K USD investment, and an end-to-end fundraising playbook and network to raise your seed and Series A
• A validation partner with proven playbooks, networks, and the systems to validate, unlock your ICP, ignite your sales pipeline, and beyond
• The support of our experienced operating team, from business design, product development, growth, recruitment, legal, and more
• Executing a winning GTM strategy to get to $50-100K ARR, and the right MVP to ensure early traction
• A community full of mentors, peers, and leaders
• $100K+ worth of business perks

About you:

• Early-stage operator experience with a proven track record of building, selling, and navigating the edge ML and on-device inference world
• You may have shipped models across multiple NPU or edge silicon targets and felt the per-vendor toolchain and optimization tax firsthand
• You may have built inference deployment, compiler, or mixed-silicon fleet infrastructure and know where fragmentation blocks product teams
• The ability to attract, hire, and lead world-class teams
• A demonstrated passion for technology's ability to change the world
• A desire to be a venture-backed founder
• Canada or US-based, and the ability to collaborate in North American time zones

Please note, this is not an employment opportunity with Forum Ventures. If you are currently fundraising your pre-seed or Seed round, please pitch our investment team instead.