Monday.com is becoming an investor. The Israeli work-management company has launched Monday Ventures, a corporate fund that will put up to $200m into startups building the next generation of workplace AI, according to a report in the Israeli business daily Globes.
The money is already moving. Monday Ventures will deploy an initial $50m, with anything beyond that needing board sign-off, in cheques of $1m to $5m across all stages.
It is led by Aviel Ichai, formerly of NEXT47, and has already done three deals, with a fourth in the pipeline: it led the seed round of Blocks.diy, a workflow-automation startup founded by ex-Monday staff; backed Guidde, an AI training-video tool, in its $50m Series B; and joined the $12m seed of NanoCo, maker of an AI assistant called NanoClaw.
Why Monday Ventures, and why now #
The timing tells the story. Monday.com’s shares fell about 21 per cent in February after its guidance disappointed Wall Street, a sell-off deepened by the fear hanging over every work-software company: that AI agents could hollow out the very category Monday sells into.
The company, which booked $1.23bn in revenue last year, has responded by remaking itself from a work-management tool into what it now calls an AI-agent platform, with consumption-based pricing. The venture arm is the outward-facing half of that bet.
Buying small stakes in the startups building work AI does several things at once. It gives Monday early sight of the tools that might disrupt it, a foothold in Israel’s dense pool of AI talent and deal flow, and a hedge: if the wave reshapes how work software is built, Monday wants to be an owner of it, not just a target. Spending to learn is cheaper than being surprised.
Software incumbents turning into VCs #
Monday is not alone in this.
As AI rewires enterprise software, established players are standing up venture arms to stay close to the companies redrawing their market, rather than waiting to acquire them later at a premium. It is the same instinct driving the wave of agentic-AI dealmaking across the sector.
The caution is that corporate venture is often as much signal as strategy, a way to look forward-leaning while the core business figures out its own AI story. Monday has not formally detailed the fund beyond the reporting, and the real test is not the announcement but whether the bets feed back into the product.
For now, the message is clear enough: the company best known for helping teams manage work now wants a stake in the software that may automate it.
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