Steel Perlot

Co-Founder and CEO Michelle Ritter leads day-to-day investment operations. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO and Chairman of Google, serves as co-founder and provides strategic guidance, deal sourcing, and access to his technical network. The specific voting structure of the investment committee has not been publicly detailed.

Deal flow is anchored by Eric Schmidt's network across Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and international technology hubs. The firm benefits from Schmidt's reputation as a technologist, drawing inbound founder interest from deep-tech and AI circles. Michelle Ritter's background in law and technology policy adds a complementary sourcing channel in regulated or legally complex technology verticals.

Steel Perlot can lead or co-lead seed rounds, though given Schmidt's profile, it often acts as a conviction anchor alongside other institutional venture firms. The firm's public participation in Keystone's 2022 seed round illustrates its role as a named, active check-writer from the earliest stages.

The firm targets inception and seed-stage companies, occasionally extending into early Series A rounds. Its focus on 'foundational technology' implies a willingness to back pre-revenue teams where the core innovation involves novel computational methods, AI architectures, or unproven infrastructure claims.

No explicit negative sector list has been published. However, given the background of its principals in computing and scalable software platforms, the firm appears to avoid capital-intensive industrial hardware and therapeutic biotechnology, favoring asset-light, code-driven business models.