Reid Hoffman joins Mosaic Ventures as an advisory partner

Reid Hoffman says he is joining Mosaic Ventures, a London seed and Series A firm that now describes AI in Europe as its sole focus, as an advisory partner. His stated contribution is US connectivity from Silicon Valley, meaning talent, company connections and capital.

Reid Hoffman says he is joining Mosaic Ventures as an advisory partner, in a post on LinkedIn. The firm is a London venture partnership investing at seed and Series A.

Mosaic was founded in 2014 by Simon Levene and Toby Coppel, launching with a $140M fund. It closed a second at $150M in 2018.

It now calls AI its sole focus and describes itself as an AI-native firm, writing cheques of $1M to $10M. Its portfolio includes the German conversational AI company Parloa and Estonia’s Veriff.

What Hoffman says he brings is specific. He wrote that he will supply US connectivity from his network in Silicon Valley, meaning knowledge, key talent, company connections and capital. Europe, he said, is “producing a growing number of exceptional AI founders, on paths to global scale“.

That sentence is the story.

A European AI fund’s most prominent addition is an American, and his stated contribution is American talent, American networks and American money. That is not a criticism, it is the proposition.

He has done versions of this before, including joining the advisory board of the Latin American software firm Globant.

Mosaic’s own account is that its partners built their careers in Silicon Valley before returning home to Europe, which makes the hire consistent rather than surprising. Hoffman also credits Chandar Lal with building the firm.

The relationships run in several directions and are worth stating plainly. Hoffman says he has been an investor in Mosaic from the start, and that he has worked with Levene and Coppel for more than 20 years.

Both sides are also involved with Entrepreneurs First, the London talent investor, which Hoffman names as shared work.

Mosaic’s portfolio includes Manas AI, the cancer drug discovery company Hoffman co-founded and for which he left Microsoft’s board.

Mosaic has not announced a fund publicly since 2018, and its own website does not list Hoffman. Neither fact contradicts the announcement, and both are worth a call.

Mistral’s chief executive has argued that Europe must own and operate its AI infrastructure. Mosaic is offering founders the other thing, faster access to America, and plenty of them want it.