Konstantine Buhler

Who they are

Konstantine Buhler is a Partner at Sequoia Capital — hosts the Training Data podcast interviewing AI founders and researchers, and launched 'Unconventional AI,' a LinkedIn content series on contrarian AI perspectives.

Person

Konstantine earned three Stanford degrees — a BS in Management Science & Engineering (2014, where he delivered the baccalaureate speech), an MS in Computer Science with an AI concentration, and an MBA as an Arjay Miller Scholar — making Stanford less a credential than a decade-long formation. Early in his career he worked as a PM and Mayfield Fellow at RelateIQ (later SalesforceIQ), then moved through a CTO role at Italia Innovation before stints at McKinsey and Meritech Capital Partners as a summer associate and then investor/principal. He joined Sequoia in December 2019 when the firm was an established top-tier firm but still pre-AI-supercycle, and has since built a franchise around seed-to-Series-B AI infrastructure bets — his board seats include Kumo.ai and CaptivateIQ, and he led Sequoia's seed investment in XBOW, an AI-powered offensive security company, in 2024. His public voice is unusually wide for a VC: he writes at Forbes, TechCrunch, and Medium, contributes to Sequoia's Inference by Sequoia Substack, hosts the Training Data podcast, launched the Unconventional AI newsletter series on LinkedIn, and has spoken at Bloomberg Talks, Reuters Next, AI Ascent 2025, and MAI 2023 in Dubai — consistently on AI infrastructure, the agent economy, and what he frames as a $10T+ services market shift. The through-line from PM to CTO to VC is a founder-adjacent operator who went looking for the sharpest edge in AI and built a media platform around the thesis. Possibly — his early stock-buying at age 13 after reading a Bill Gates book hints at a self-taught investor instinct that predates his Stanford formation.

Company

Sequoia's most recent major move is its $7 billion late-stage expansion fund raised in April 2026 — the firm's largest ever, nearly double its 2022 vehicle — the first major capital call under new co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, who succeeded Roelof Botha after his removal in a surprise vote in November 2025. Doug Leone was named chairman in April 2026, returning to the firm's leadership structure. In January 2026 Sequoia led a $25 billion funding round for Anthropic at a $350 billion valuation, having already backed competing firms OpenAI and xAI — a deliberate break from the VC convention of picking a single winner in a sector. Alongside the late-stage fund, Sequoia launched $950 million in early-stage vehicles in October 2025, split between a $750 million Series A fund and a $200 million seed fund. The portfolio stands at 1,689 companies with 144 unicorns, 123 IPOs, and 424 acquisitions as of mid-2026, and over 60% of new capital in 2025–2026 has gone into AI applications and infrastructure.

Market

Sequoia competes directly with a16z, Accel, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, Lightspeed, Bessemer, and Index Ventures, with a16z noted for spreading capital across named thematic funds while Sequoia concentrates ownership in a smaller number of category-defining companies like OpenAI and Stripe. The firm manages approximately $85 billion in assets under management as of 2026, and its strategy of backing multiple competing AI frontier labs simultaneously — OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI — reflects a broader industry pattern of concentrated funding among a handful of firms willing to bet on the whole AI wave rather than individual horses. Geopolitical tensions have already reshaped Sequoia's footprint: its China business spun off as HongShan and its India/Southeast Asia operations became Peak XV Partners in 2023, following a U.S. House probe into its China investments.

Network

Konstantine's most named relationship at Sequoia is Roelof Botha, whom he described as a mentor figure over eight years — though Botha stepped down as managing partner in November 2025. Within the firm he collaborates with colleagues including Krystal Hu, Avery Klemmer, and Jill (Greenberg) Chase on AI investment work. Externally, he has appeared publicly alongside Reuters Breakingviews journalist Anita Ramaswamy and Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua and Caroline Hyde on AI discussions.

Roelof Botha· Former Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital (mentor)
Alfred Lin· Co-Steward, Sequoia Capital
Pat Grady· Co-Steward, Sequoia Capital
Krystal Hu· Colleague, Sequoia Capital
Anita Ramaswamy· Journalist, Reuters Breakingviews
Francine Lacqua· Host, Bloomberg Talks

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Sequoia since December 2019, spanning the entire AI infrastructure supercycle → likely thinks in multi-year thesis arcs, not deal-by-deal opportunism.
Active across Forbes, TechCrunch, Medium, Sequoia's Substack, and LinkedIn → highly comfortable being publicly visible and treating content as part of the investment franchise, not a side activity.
Hosts the Training Data podcast interviewing AI founders and researchers → probably enters meetings already knowing the technical and product details; expects the same level of preparation in return.
Launched Unconventional AI newsletter series → signals a preference for contrarian or non-consensus framing; likely unreceptive to pitches that lead with the obvious consensus view.
Career arc from PM/Mayfield Fellow to CTO to VC, with board seats at infrastructure companies like Kumo.ai and XBOW → brings operator intuition to the table and will probe product architecture and go-to-market specifics, not just market size.
Delivered Stanford's baccalaureate speech in 2014 and speaks at major venues (Bloomberg, Reuters, AI Ascent keynotes) → comfortable in high-visibility moments and likely calibrates credibility quickly in conversation.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific Training Data podcast episode or a recent Forbes/TechCrunch piece he wrote — he'll clock that you did the work, not just a name search.
→ Frame your topic in the context of the agent economy or the services-market shift he keynoted at AI Ascent 2025 — that's his live thesis and he'll engage faster if you're already speaking that language.
→ If you're in AI infrastructure, come with a specific architectural view — his board work at Kumo.ai and XBOW means he'll probe technical specifics, not just market narratives.
→ Don't pitch around the Sequoia leadership transition (Botha's departure, Lin/Grady) unless he brings it up — Botha was a named mentor and the situation was turbulent.
→ Ask him about what 'unconventional' means to him in the AI context — it's the name of his newsletter series and likely reflects a genuine contrarian conviction worth surfacing.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the XBOW seed investment — he led Sequoia's bet on AI-powered offensive security in 2024, a pointed conviction that AI would reshape the attack surface before most VCs were thinking about security at all.
Reference his AI Ascent 2025 keynote framing of a $10T+ services market shift — he's built a public thesis that AI moves the economy from selling software to selling outcomes, and he'll have a strong view on where that's playing out or not.
Mention the Training Data podcast by name and ask about a guest or theme — he hosts it himself, interviewing AI founders and researchers, and it's his primary vehicle for staying close to the technical frontier.

Discovery questions

In your XBOW and Kumo.ai board work, what's the sharpest gap you see between how AI security and infrastructure companies pitch their defensibility versus how it actually holds up in practice?
Your AI Ascent thesis frames AI as moving from software sales to outcome sales — which portfolio company is closest to actually pricing and delivering on that model today?
You've been at Sequoia through the entire AI infrastructure buildout — how has your framework for what counts as a durable moat at the seed stage shifted from 2019 to now?

Avoid

Don't lead with a generic 'AI is changing everything' frame — he's the one who wrote the $10T services-market thesis and will expect you to have a specific, non-consensus view to add to it.

Make it yours