Sam Awrabi

Since 2018, Sam has advised or been the first sales hire at over 15 AI infrastructure companies, including being the first sales hire in the experiment and model management category, which is now worth over two billion in enterprise valuation. During this time he built thousands of connections with AI founders and builders. Sam joined MissingLink.ai after its acquisition by Samsung in the newly formed Experiment Tracking Market. When Sam joined MissingLink, the entire market had low double-digit paying customers; today, there are over 4,000. Following his success at MissingLink, Sam took on the role of the first revenue hire at Comet ML. There, he played a key role in scaling the company from seed to Series B, helping close deals with over 150 customers, including tech giants like Uber, Cisco, Etsy, and Netflix. Sam gained invaluable insights into how enterprises buy or build AI infrastructure, witnessing firsthand how a new category of AI infrastructure is created and then transitions from early adopters to late adopters. After his tenure at Comet.ml, Sam founded Awrabi Consulting. Through his consulting, he advised leading AI startups such as Deci.ai, ClearML, Layer.ai, Datature, Deepnote, Activeloop.ai, Segmind, Nomic AI, and Ori.co, among others. His impact was significant: 54% of his advising clients went on to raise Series A funding, and 18% advanced to raise Series B. During this period, Sam also invested or advised four new AI Infrastructure markets, most notably was Deci.ai in the newly formed model optimization space which was acquired by NVIDIA, marking a significant milestone. Fueled by these achievements and insights, Sam founded Banyan Ventures to further amplify his impact by backing the most crucial AI infrastructure companies. His early investments through Banyan have shown promising trajectories, with the first three out of four investments on track to become valued at over $1 billion each.