M12 Ventures

M12 Ventures, formerly known as Microsoft Ventures, is a venture capital and private equity firm making series A and beyond investments in business to business technology companies that is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was founded in 2016. Microsoft Ventures was originally an umbrella company for all of Microsoft's investments. On May 30, 2016, the Microsoft Ventures group split into two arms: one that remained named Microsoft Ventures, focused on companies in the Series A investment stages and beyond in North America and Israel; and Microsoft Accelerator, which invested in startup companies around the world through their seven locations. Microsoft Ventures' name was changed again to M12 just 23 months later on April 30, 2018. Microsoft Accelerator's name was changed to Microsoft ScaleUp. M12 is headquartered in Seattle with additional offices in London, and Tel Aviv.

M12 Ventures typically invests in business to business companies focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning, big data and analytics, business SaaS, cloud infrastructure, productivity and communication, security, and other new technologies. Notable investments made by M12 Ventures include: Bonsai, CloudLanes, Comfy, Figure Eight, Frame, Layer, Livongo, Make.tv. Snaproute, Voicea, Cognitive Scale, Dynamic Signal, Kahoot!, Markforged, Rapid API, SlyCloud, Unravel, WhiteSource, and Zencity.

On October 17, 2019 M12 Ventures announced it will be supporting the Female Founders Competition with Mayfield and Pivotal Ventures. The competition will focus on female entrepreneurs building business to business software-as-a-service and deep technology solutions. M12 Ventures, Mayfield, and Pivotal Ventures will select four winners who will a receive a total of $6 million in venture funding, mentoring, and other benefits offered by the firms supporting the Female Founders Competition.