Ann Miura-Ko is a founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm in Palo Alto, CA. Called “the most powerful woman in startups” by Forbes, Ann was one of the first investors in companies such as Lyft and TaskRabbit, and has been an early backer of many others, including Ayasdi, Xamarin, and Modcloth. Ann is well-known in Silicon Valley as a pioneer investor in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. In addition to partnering with entrepreneurs building impactful businesses based on truly intelligent AI, she is a co-sponsor of the AI Grant, a nonprofit research lab that funds work on open source AI. Her deep interest in the space began as a child—her father was a NASA rocket scientist—and her expertise developed as an undergraduate at Yale, where she participated in the Robocup Competition in Paris, France. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List, she is also a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford and a member of All Raise, a nonprofit committed to improving diversity in funders and founders. Prior to Floodgate, Ann worked at Charles River Ventures, and McKinsey and Company. She has a BSEE from Yale and a PhD from Stanford in math modeling of computer security. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, three kids, and one spoiled dog.