AAF Management Ltd. (AAF) has announced the successful close of its $55 million early-stage hybrid vehicle, The Axis Fund, designed to back emerging venture managers and their most promising portfolio companies from pre-seed to pre-IPO stages. With this new fund, AAF’s total assets under management have now reached $250 million, marking a major milestone in the firm’s growth trajectory.
Founded in 2016, AAF has built a strong track record across the global venture capital ecosystem. The firm has completed 138 direct investments and supported 39 emerging fund managers across 43 vintages. Among its portfolio successes are five unicorns, Jasper, Current, Flutterwave, Drata, and Hello Heart; along with 20 notable exits including MoneyLion, Even Financial, and TruOptik, representing a combined enterprise value of more than $2 billion.
The Axis Fund is anchored by Mubadala Capital, alongside major family offices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Other backers include U.S.-based asset managers, a multi-billion-dollar venture capital firm, and a publicly traded company.
AAF’s latest fund adopts a data-driven strategy centered on leveraging Limited Partner (LP) investments in emerging managers to gain access to proprietary early-stage market insights. This approach, according to the firm, gives investors access to private market data that platforms like Crunchbase or CB Insights cannot provide.
So far, The Axis Fund has deployed capital into 25 pre-seed and seed funds and made five direct investments in early-stage and growth-stage companies. Collectively, these managers have exposure to around 800 startups founded between 2021 and 2025.
General Partner and Managing Director Kyle Hendrick said the fund merges AAF’s dual strengths in fund-of-funds investing and seed-stage direct investments. “The richest dataset of private market companies at the earliest stages comes through LP checks in emerging managers,” Hendrick explained. “With The Axis Fund, we’re combining both strategies under one umbrella to generate the best risk-adjusted returns for our LPs.”
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Fellow General Partner Omar Darwazah described the fund’s model as “a two-pronged strategy” that gives investors exposure to a diversified base of fund managers while also identifying high-potential startups early. “This approach helps us separate signal from noise and increases our chances of backing outliers, the next 10x companies and unicorns,” Darwazah said.
Several of AAF’s partners praised the firm’s collaborative approach. Suzanne Fletcher, Founder and General Partner of Zelda Ventures, said AAF has been “an exceptional partner,” noting their dual role as fund investor and co-investor. Similarly, Zaid Rahman, Founder and CEO of Flex, highlighted AAF’s long-term commitment to portfolio companies, saying the firm “has participated in every financing round” since first investing through 305 Ventures.
AAF’s previous fund vintages, including its $25 million Fund I (2017), $39 million Fund II (2021), and $32 million fund-of-funds vehicle, have consistently ranked in the top decile of venture capital performance benchmarks according to Cambridge Associates and Carta data.
With The Axis Fund, AAF aims to expand its influence across the global venture landscape, building on a reputation for identifying early winners and empowering the next generation of venture managers.
