In 2004, both Jeanne DeWitt Grosser and Guillermo Rauch were obsessed with Gmail.
Grosser was in her first job at Google, working on Gmail just two months after its launch—when Gmail broke, she worked with engineers to fix it. More than 6,000 miles away, Rauch was a teenager, studying Gmail’s innovations from the outside.
“When I was a kid in Argentina, I became obsessed with JavaScript,” said Rauch. “I’d started building open source frameworks in JavaScript, and Gmail played a huge role in that. I reverse-engineered a lot of Gmail because they discovered new techniques on how to build this really sophisticated desktop app—but inside a web browser. I got it as early as I possibly could… Gmail was like the Second Coming, basically, but for the internet!”
Decades later, the two were introduced. Rauch was now the CEO and founder of AI web development startup Vercel (last valued at $3.25 billion), while Grosser was the chief business officer at Stripe, one of the largest, most-scrutinized private companies in the world.
After nine years at Stripe, Grosser is now joining Vercel as the company’s COO, Fortune has exclusively learned. She believes that Vercel—a leader in “vibecoding”—today is at the same inflection point Stripe was at when she first joined the payments juggernaut almost a decade ago.
“You have immense developer love, but that can be ephemeral, so you have to earn and keep that every single day—at the same time as you figure out how to move up market,” Grosser said. “When I came into Stripe, I realized how quickly it wanted to go, and how it had to get going on the next set of larger companies fast. Arguably, Vercel is ahead of Stripe at this point on its scale, on enterprise penetration and relevance.”
Grosser’s arrival comes at a pivotal time for Vercel. The startup launched v0 in 2023, an AI-driven product that’s been widely viewed as a significant step in web development—even people with limited to no coding experience can create and adjust web applications by using natural language prompts. Grosser wants to see Vercel scale from here, turning the app into a fully enterprise-ready tool and transforming the company into a predictably efficient growth machine.
“My job is to get this organization to a point where I always know, definitively, that if you give me $1, I can predictably produce ‘x’ dollars, as a result,” said Grosser.
So…IPO?
“We have been working towards public company readiness,” Rauch added, noting that there’s no “definitive timeline.”
“For me, the big win would be streamlining go-to-market, improved efficiency, stronger company culture, and setting us up to scale for the next 10 years of growing the company itself, in headcount and our internal operations,” Rauch told Fortune.
For Grosser, leaping to Vercel harkens back to the beginning of her career. As Rauch showed her v0, she saw throughlines from her time at Gmail.
“I kept saying, ‘So, that’s like Gmail, right?’ Or, ‘When Gmail did this, this is what we’d use if we built on Vercel today,'” said Grosser. “So, part of me feels like there’s this destiny. Vercel basically combines having worked on one of the largest, most sophisticated JavaScript applications in its early days and Stripe, this developer-led company. You stick them together, and it’s like my career has been building towards landing at Vercel.”
Rauch sees the parallel, too.
“[The open web] is the marketplace of ideas, and it doesn’t matter if you’re starting a company in Argentina, Bangladesh, Europe, or the United States,” said Rauch. “It’s a level playing field. Back in Argentina, I wanted to make a career out of doing what I love—because you can just ship things on the web. You don’t need permission from anybody.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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VENTURE DEALS
- Ditto, a San Francisco-based mobile database, raised $82 million in Series B funding. Top Tier Capital Partners and Acrew Capital led the round and was joined by U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, True Ventures, Amity Ventures, and others.
- Pentera, a Burlington, Mass.-based automated security validation company, raised $60 million in Series D funding. Evolution Equity Partners led the round and was joined by Farallon Capital Management.
- Bria, a New York City-based visual generative AI platform, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Red Dot Capital led the round and was joined by Maor Investment, Entrée Capital, GFT Ventures, and others.
- AIceberg, a New York City-based AI risk management platform, raised $10 million in seed funding from SYN Ventures and Sprout & Oak.
- Augmenta, a Toronto-based AI software provider for the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, raised $10 million in seed funding. Prelude Ventures led the round and was joined by Montage Ventures.
- Onyx, a San Francisco-based AI workplace research agent, raised $10 million in seed funding. Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital led the round and were joined by Y Combinator and angel investors.
- QuamCore, a Herzliya, Israel-based quantum computing scalability company, raised $9 million in seed funding. Viola Ventures and Earth & Beyond Ventures led the round and were joined by Surround Ventures.
- The Wires, a Seattle-based operator of B2B2C platforms FashWire, GlossWire, and PawWire, raised $8 million in Series A-2 funding from Dani Monaghan, Jenny Zhu, Cynthia Hollen, existing investors Manny Rivelo and Karsten Newbury, and other angel investors.
- nunu.ai, a San Francisco-based video game testing AI agents developer, raised $6 million in seed funding. A16z speedrun and TIRTA Ventures led the round and was joined by Y Combinator and others.
- elea, a Hamburg-based AI-powered pathology software developer, raised €4 million ($4.4 million) in funding. Fly Ventures and Giant Ventures led the round and were joined by others.
- Wolf Games, a Los Angeles-based generative games developer, raised $4 million in seed funding from Dick Wolf, Jimmy Iovine, and Paul Wachter.
PRIVATE EQUITY
- BUKO, backed by Equistone Partners Europe, acquired Road Rental Scandinavia, a Sollentuna, Sweden-based traffic equipment and workplace safety services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- CoachCare, backed by Integrity Growth Partners and others, acquired VitalTech, a Carrollton, Texas-based care solutions provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- PestCo, a portfolio company of Thompson Street Capital Partners, acquired Garella Pest Services, a Staunton, Ill.-based pest control services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- PharmaCord, a Jeffersonville, Ind.-based pharmaceutical services provider backed by Permira, agreed to merge with Mercalis, a Morrisville, N.C.-based life sciences commercialization services provider backed by Odyssey Investment Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
- Gemspring Capital Management acquired Appriss Retail, an Irvine, Calif.-based AI-powered loss prevention software for retailers, from Clearlake Capital Group and Insight Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHER
- Scopely agreed to acquire the games business of Niantic, a San Francisco-based software developer, for $3.5 billion. Following the acquisition, Niantic will spin off its technology platform into a standalone entity called Niantic Spatial.
FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS
- Bessemer Venture Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, raised $350 million for its second India fund focused on AI-enabled services and SaaS, fintech, digital health, and consumer brands.
PEOPLE
- AVALT, a Boston-based investment firm, added James Scola as a partner. Previously, he was at Abry Partners.
- Define Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, added Carolyn Magill as a venture partner. Previously, she was at Aetion.
