Gigascale Capital Promotes Evaline Tsai to Partner

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gigascale Capital, a venture firm founded by Mike Schroepfer that backs early-stage companies rebuilding the physical economy with solutions that, at scale, are cheaper, more productive, and less polluting, today announced the promotion of Evaline Tsai, Ph.D., to Partner.

Tsai brings a rare combination of technical depth and company-building experience, spanning the full journey from lab to scaled deployment. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from the University of Cambridge, where she also founded Cambridge Cancer Genomics, a Y Combinator-backed healthcare company. She served as the first product manager for AI and machine learning at Samsara, where she was granted four patents. Prior to joining Gigascale, Tsai worked at Fine Structure Ventures, where her portfolio included Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Boston Metal. She also holds a B.S.E. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Princeton, with certificates in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Studies.

“Evaline is the kind of investor deep tech founders seek out,” said Victoria Beasley, General Partner of Gigascale Capital. “She can engage at the most granular scientific level and help founders build from breakthrough to scale. That combination is rare, and it’s exactly what founders working on hard problems need.”

“Founders building in this space are often doing something no one has done before,” said Tsai. “My job is to understand the science well enough to know what’s real and to be a partner in the decisions that don’t have a playbook.”

Tsai is known for technical rigor, partnering with first-time technical founders early, and mapping how novel science scales, costs drop, and technology wins in the market. That technical depth and commercial instinct shaped her conviction in Solcoa, a rare earth production company built on a pragmatic premise: the U.S. won't beat China by copying Chinese processes. Tsai and Solcoa founder Hooman Reza Nezhad agreed that the only credible path to commercial viability is a fundamentally better process, one that is cleaner, has a smaller footprint, and is ultimately cheaper.

“Evaline backed me while I was still in high school, before anyone else was paying attention,” said Nezhad. “She took the science seriously and championed what we were building long before the opportunity was obvious.” Less than two years later, Solcoa has produced its first materials without the environmental toll of conventional rare-earth production.

“Evaline embodies how we operate at Gigascale. We show up for founders as a team,” said Mike Schroepfer, Founding Partner of Gigascale Capital. “That’s how we help companies move from breakthrough to scaled deployment, and how we build a firm that drives climate impact at scale.”

Tsai currently serves as Board Observer for six Gigascale portfolio companies: Cocoon, Dioxycle, Pasture Biosciences, Skouria, Terradot, and Vor Systems. She is a Kauffman Fellow and was named a 2023 Rising Star of Venture Capital by Business Insider.

About Gigascale Capital

Gigascale Capital backs early-stage companies rebuilding the physical economy with solutions that, at scale, are cheaper, more productive, and less polluting. Founded in 2023 by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, Victoria Beasley, and Evaline Tsai, the firm has invested in over 25 companies. Some decarbonize directly. Others create the enabling layers that make hardware and infrastructure faster and cheaper to build. In both cases, climate impact follows from better-performing systems.