In a press release Stillmark which is world’s first Bitcoin focused venture capitalist firm founded in 2019, declared former Google X Engineer Vikash Singh as Principal Investor. He is an artificial intelligence expert.

Till now Stillmark has raised over $40 million mainly for investing in startups that use Bitcoin and the Lightning network. As per Stillmark, its fund was twice oversubscribed. Singh has good experience both as an engineer and investor.

“Bitcoin has always been an incredibly exciting field, but with new technical developments, especially in Layer-2 technologies such as Lightning, the stage is set for Bitcoin to positively impact the lives of billions around the world,” said Singh, per the release.

Alyse Killeen, Managing Partner and Founder of Stillmark disclosed that he and Vikash have been colleagues and friends for over six years. Alyse said from cutting-edge research to production engineering to scaling early-stage startups, Vikash has a diverse background.

Before joining Google X Vikash had joined at Heal which is a Series D stage health tech company that utilizes AI and deep learning. Here joined at seed stage and spent five years. Singh’s artificial intelligence expertise comes from his previous experience. In addition to his work at Google's moonshot lab, X, Singh has worked with Sandbox, an Alphabet division dedicated to AI and physics, as a biotech and quantum computing researcher. During his tenure at Heal, he was also involved in developing production machine learning systems that worked in conjunction with an in-house autonomous routing engine for clinical teams.

Singh wants Bitcoin to be a “stable base layer for people to be their bank and be independent.” As one of Stillmark's early portfolio companies, Lightning Network, led to El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin as legal tender and the ability to use it as a payment method alongside cash.

Singh will focus on identifying and cultivating relationships with Bitcoin ecosystem founders, supporting engineering teams in Stillmark's portfolio, and focusing on Lightning startups to drive future growth for Stillmark.

Indrani Bose

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA