# Sarah Guo

Sarah Guo is an American venture capitalist and founder of Conviction, an early-stage AI-focused investment firm. She was formerly a general partner at Greylock Partners and is known for investments in Figma and AI startups.

Sarah Guo is an American venture capitalist and the founder of Conviction, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on artificial intelligence. She previously served as a general partner at Greylock Partners, where she led investments in companies such as Figma and Musical.ly. Guo is recognized as a prominent investor in the AI sector and co-hosts the technology podcast No Priors with entrepreneur Elad Gil.

## Early life and family

Guo grew up in Wisconsin. Her father, Jerry Guo, emigrated from Hunan, China, to the United States in 1987 after graduating from Tsinghua University. Her mother, Lucy Xie, an engineer, followed a year later, and both were hired by Bell Labs. In 2003, her father founded Casa Systems, a broadband equipment company based in Andover, Massachusetts, which her mother later joined. Guo built the company's first website at age 14 and was pitching the company to investors by 19. Casa Systems went public on the Nasdaq in December 2017 at a market capitalization of roughly $1.2 billion, though it eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024.

## Education

After attending Phillips Academy, Guo graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School. She received a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Business Administration, and a Master of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. Her multidisciplinary education spanned business and technology, providing a foundation for her later work in venture capital.

## Career at Greylock

Guo moved to San Francisco in 2012 to work at Goldman Sachs, where she worked on Workday's initial public offering. In 2013, she was recruited to Greylock by Aneel Bhusri, Workday's CEO and a Greylock partner. At Greylock, Guo led the Series A investment in Figma, a collaborative design tool, and worked on Musical.ly, the app that later became TikTok. At age 28, she became the firm's youngest general partner. Her work at Greylock established her reputation for identifying high-growth software companies early.

## Founding Conviction

Guo left Greylock in July 2022, and in October of that year launched Conviction, a new early-stage venture capital firm focused on AI, with $101 million in initial capital. In late 2024, Conviction raised a second fund with Mike Vernal. The firm's investments include early stakes in Baseten, Cognition AI, OpenEvidence, Harvey, HeyGen, Mistral AI, Sierra Platform, Sunday Robotics, and Thinking Machines Lab. Guo's investment thesis centers on the transformative potential of [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) across industries, from [large-language-model](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/large-language-model) applications to infrastructure.

## Media and recognition

Guo appears in media outlets as an expert in AI, infrastructure, business software, cybersecurity, technology policy, and software engineering. She is listed on the Midas List and the Midas Seed List of top investors. She co-hosts the podcast No Priors with tech founder and super angel Elad Gil, where she discusses trends in [generative-ai](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai), [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning), and startup ecosystems. Her commentary often addresses the practical deployment of AI in enterprise settings and the competitive landscape involving companies like [openai](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/openai) and [anthropic](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/anthropic).

## Personal life

Guo is married to Pat Grady of Sequoia Capital, with whom she has four children. She balances her venture capital career with family life, and her background includes direct experience with entrepreneurship through her father's company, which shaped her early interest in technology and business.

## References

Source facts from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) were used as ground truth for this article.

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/sarah-guo
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-08T06:09:41.422222+00:00