Foresight: The Data & AI Revolution for the Private Markets

The private market has always revolved around relationships—who you know, who your network knows and how quickly those involved can mobilize. But we’re entering a new era, one where technology doesn’t replace relationships but supercharges them with better information, connections, and decision making. And the firms that figure out how to harness that power will thrive in the next chapter in the private markets.

In the early days of venture capital and private equity, deals typically flowed through backchannels and handshakes, with success hinging on network strength. From the 1970s through the dot-com boom, this model scaled as talent moved from Fortune 500 companies into startups and the venture sector grew. Fast forward to today: the number of funds has more than tripled, and VC assets under management exploded from $219B to $1.2T in just two decades. [1] But as the capital flooded in, the game changed.

The edge shifted from exclusivity to execution. From “who you know” to “what you can do with what you know.” The rise of AI and analytics is turning venture and private equity into a quant-style game, where the winners are building data moats and unique strategies. By 2025, more than 75% of VC deal reviews will use AI and data analytics. That’s not a trend—it’s a tidal wave. [2]

The Private Market Data Stack: From Scrappy Tools to Strategic Infrastructure

The early data era in the private markets was defined by platforms such as Crunchbase, PitchBook, and CapIQ—valuable for specific use cases, but limited. Then came system-of-record tools like Affinity and Carta. Now we’re seeing a new breed of intelligence platforms (think: Harmonic, Enigma, Synaptic) offering deep, structured insights that specialize in specific market signals, such as credit card swipes, employment shifts, intent signals.

And yet, most firms are still mired in spreadsheets, legacy BI tools, siloed APIs, dashboards that don’t talk to each other. More tools often mean more confusion.

NEA is no stranger to this dynamic, with volumes of data that span decades. So when we started searching for an end-to-end data infrastructure partner—one that could structure our proprietary data, integrate seamlessly into our workflows, and free us up to focus on what makes us different—we found Foresight. They didn’t just check boxes, they changed the way we think about investing.

Why Foresight? Because Private Markets Are Graphical

Foresight gets what most platforms miss: private markets aren’t linear, they’re graphical. Everything is interconnected—founders, operators, investors, deals, outcomes. Representing these relationships with structured, dynamic data isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s mission critical. This is perhaps best analogized by the PayPal Mafia, a core network of technical operators out of PayPal that have subsequently gone on to build a significant number of the modern big tech companies including Palantir, YouTube, Tesla and LinkedIn (which subsequently created their own networks of innovators). Networks are at the heart of the private market and our data infrastructure needs to represent these entities and relationships to enable agent readiness.

And this isn’t just for the investment team. Talent, portfolio ops, marketing and every function across a firm benefits from a shared, searchable source of truth. But building this in-house is a massive lift that is not core to a firm’s IP. It’s not just about hiring data engineers, it’s about building a core competency around infrastructure, algo development, integrations and maintaining it as the landscape and workflow evolves. Today, Foresight offers three products all overlaying their proprietary data infrastructure:

1. Sourcing: a platform built for investors to collaboratively manage external company dealflow and aggregate data across sources

2. Portfolio: a fund management platform for operations, LPs, GPs and the finance team to understand portfolio performance

3. Diligence: a platform built for investors to manage ongoing diligence and aggregate data across decision-enabling data sources

Foresight allows firms to stay focused on their edge: proprietary sourcing engines, technical theses, and nimble, data-oriented decisions. They handle the plumbing while the firm drives the strategy. 

Backing the Builders of the AI-Native Private Market

We’ve known the team at Foresight for years and have deep conviction that they’re the right team to lead this revolution. Jason Miller, Founder and CEO, has done this before at Greycroft, Point72 Ventures, and at BlackRock’s Aladdin. He’s built mission-critical products in complex ecosystems and knows how to bring precision and scale to private market infrastructure. And he’s assembled an all-star team of engineers, product leaders, and investors who understand the regulatory, technical and security nuances of this industry.

We are excited to build the future of data-driven investing alongside Foresight as customers and former technical operators. Our own internal task force of former engineers and data scientists is shaping how we invest, working hand-in-hand with portfolio companies including Foresight and Databricks to create a next-generation decision engine that blends human intuition with a proprietary data moat and agentic enablement.

That’s why we didn’t just become customers of Foresight, we led their Seed round.

We believe the future of private markets won’t be won by guesswork or gut feel—it’ll be won by firms who know how to turn relationships into data and data into decisions.