With big bets in cutting-edge software, fintech and AI, these young venture capitalists are transforming the world of investing, one check at a time.
By Bella Sayegh, Dean Sterling Jones and Richard Nieva
Devon Gethers, 29, and Karlton Haney, 28 launched their first investment fund before they’d even cracked an MBA textbook. They’d deferred their acceptance to Harvard Business School to build on an idea: that other young business school graduates might be the best entrepreneurs. It inspired them to build Meridian Ventures, an investment firm built on the idea that the most overlooked founder talent pool was coming from top MBA programs. It’s quite antithetical to thoughts from VC leaders like Peter Thiel, whose famous Thiel Fellowship awards founders who decide to drop out of college to build their startups.
“It’s kind of a contrarian take,” Haney says. “There are a lot of venture capitalists out there that think business school graduates don’t make for good founders.” So far, their MBA bet has paid off.
Today, Meridian Ventures invests solely in companies with at least one founder who has earned an MBA, or is currently pursuing one, from one of ten top programs in the U.S.—including Stanford, Harvard and Wharton. The firm has a portfolio of over 45 investments, including healthtech company Onelmaging, legal startup Hona and Cast AI, an AI agent platform. Meridian is now deploying its second $25 million fund, co-investing with top firms like Bessemer, Khosla and Bain Capital Ventures.
While Haney and Gethers’ thesis is unique, their aptitude for finding founders in unexpected places is shared by a number of the stellar young investors on the 30 Under 30 list in Venture Capital for 2026.
Take CiCi Bellis26, a former tennis pro-turned-founder and managing partner of Cartan Capital. Using her experience on the court, Bellis backs founders specialising in sports and health technology, deploying capital from an inaugural $10 million fund. She’s now raising a second $40 million fund. Meanwhile Katie Vasquez27, an investor at Calibrate Ventures who studied astrophysics at Brown, is using her science and engineering knowledge to back deep tech startups.
Another big theme in 2026: backing startups riding the AI boom. Manmeet Gujral29, at CapitalG (Google parent Alphabet’s late-stage growth fund), has sourced deals at Magic and Baseten, and contributed to investments at other AI startups like /dev/agents and Motif. At Bessemer Venture Partners, Grace Ma29, has been critical to the firm’s AI investments, including Anthropic—which now boasts a $350 billion valuation, Wrapbook, and Render. Meanwhile, Mantis VC’s Saveena Mandadi28, is placing significant investments in AI companies like Whop, Haus Analytics and Incident.io for Mantis VC.
Beyond traditional VC work, many members of the 2026 Under 30 cohort are working to make venture capital more accessible to both founders and investors. Jonathan Chang27, is the founder of DayDream Ventures, a pre-seed fund. In addition to backing 16 companies, Chang launched DayDream Fellows, a program that helps more than 250 students from schools often overlooked—Baruch College or University of Central Florida—who are looking to break into venture capital, as well as students from target schools like UCLA or Michigan.
To find the best of the best in Venture Capital, Forbes reporters Richard Nieva, Dean Sterling Jones and Bella Sayegh combed through hundreds of nominations submitted online or generated by our own reporting. The 30 Under 30 list spotlights funders and founders aged 29 or younger as of December 31, 2025, and who have never previously been named to a U.S., Europe or Asia 30 Under 30 list.
Each list is judged by a panel of industry leaders after an open submission process. In Venture Capital, the 2026 list was judged by Wesley Chana Midas List investor and cofounder and partner at FPV, Midas-lister Mar Hershenson, cofounder and partner at Pear VC, Theresia Gouwfounding partner at Acrew Capital and America’s first female billionaire venture capitalist, and Susan Liupartner at Uncork Capital and alum of the 2018 Under 30 Venture Capital list. Of those named on the final VC list, 58% identify as people of color and 48% as women.
The idea is to stand out from the pack and find a different approach to investing, said Gethers, the Meridian Ventures cofounder. “We don’t look like your normal venture capitalists. And we view that as an advantage, not a disadvantage,” he said.
This year’s list was edited by Richard Nieva, Dean Sterling Jones and Bella Sayegh. For a link to our complete 2026 30 Under 30 Venture Capital, click hereand for full 2026 30 Under 30 coverage, click here.
