AI Founder, Edge Hardware at Forum Ventures (United States)
Forum Ventures· United States·
Role details
Job description
Forum's Venture Studio brings together ambitious people, brilliant ideas, and capital to build the best B2B SaaS businesses in the world, from 0 to 1. In addition to capital and an idea, we provide founders with access to investor networks, fundraising support, and the resources needed to build transformational companies. Our AI Studio has launched 17 companies since 2023, and we're launching 7 more in 2026. We're designed to help Founders move faster, develop better insights, and build companies that have a higher success rate than startups built in any other way.
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 here.
Why work at Forum Ventures
- Culture: A team of “doers and connectors” that operates like a startup – fail fast, iterate quickly, and embrace ambiguity. The firm is built by founders for founders, so the environment is entrepreneurial and supportive.
- Remote/Hybrid/Office: Not explicitly stated, but roles are likely hybrid or in-office given the hands-on studio and accelerator model. The team is distributed across New York, San Francisco, and Toronto.
- Notable perks: Opportunities to work directly with early-stage founders, participate in venture building, and be part of a small but mighty team that has outsized impact. The firm emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Open roles: Current openings include positions on the Forum team, studio founder opportunities, and portfolio company roles (see careers page).