Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm's infrastructure practice, having joined in 2016. He holds a PhD and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University, helped pioneer software-defined networking as a Stanford researcher, and previously worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He cofounded Illuminics Systems, acquired by Quova in 2006, and Nicira, where he was CTO until VMware acquired it for $1.26 billion in 2012, after which he served as a Fellow and senior vice president at VMware leading networking and security. He has received the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award and the NEC C&C Award, and sits on boards including Convex, Cursor, Fivetran, Kong, Netlify and World Labs.
Education
M.S. Computer Science, Stanford University
Ph.D. Computer Science, Stanford University
Previous Experience
Researcher, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Co-founder, Illuminics Systems (acquired by Quova in 2006)
Co-founder & CTO, Nicira (acquired by VMware in 2012)
Fellow and Senior Vice President, VMware (networking and security)
Notable Investments
ConvexFivetranCursorWorld Labs
Board Seats
Ambient.ai
Astranis
Braintrust
Coactive
Convex
Cursor
Distributional
Fivetran
Ideogram
Imply
Kong
Material Security
Netlify
Pindrop Security
Preset
Truffle Security
World Labs
Career Timeline
2006
Illuminics Systems, the IP analytics company he cofounded, was acquired by Quova.
2012
Nicira, which he cofounded and served as CTO, was acquired by VMware for $1.26 billion.
2016
Joined Andreessen Horowitz as a general partner after leaving VMware.
2019
Joined Fivetran's board of directors when Andreessen Horowitz led its $44 million Series B.
2022
Led Andreessen Horowitz's Series A in Convex and joined the board.
2024
Coauthored Andreessen Horowitz's announcements of its investments in Cursor and World Labs.