AT&T Ventures’ Head Vikram Taneja On The New Rules of Seed-Stage Defensibility

In his role as head of AT&T Ventures , Vikram Taneja leads the corporate venture capital arm of the telecommunications giant, managing the corporation’s portfolio across direct equity investments, warrants and limited-partner fund positions. His investment mandate primarily focuses on early-stage technology companies from seed to Series B that align with or impact the global telecommunications, network infrastructure and enterprise software sectors. Under his leadership, AT&T Ventures targets investments in software, hardware and infrastructure sectors where AT&T’s network scale and internal engineering resources provide a distinct commercial or technical diligence advantage. Portfolio companies include enterprise and deep-tech firms such as Databricks , Apptronik , Cyera , Carbyne , Aira and AST SpaceMobile . Vikram Taneja, head of AT&T Ventures. (Courtesy photo) Prior to his current 12-year stint directing AT&T Ventures, Taneja spent more than two decades working across corporate development, venture lending and investment banking. He previously managed M&A and strategic investment activities for WarnerMedia during AT&T’s ownership. Taneja also served as a director at Orix Ventures , where he focused on growth-capital debt and equity investments in mid- to late-stage technology businesses, as well as holding corporate finance and investment banking roles at J.P. Morgan and PricewaterhouseCoopers . In an email interview with Crunchbase News, Taneja shares why he believes that while AI has drastically lowered the barrier to building software, it has also shifted the definition of seed-stage technical risk. The new dynamics, in his view, gives AT&T Ventures an opportunity to differentiate itself by offering immediate, real-world technical validation and network integration rather than just capital. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Crunchbase News: If startups are building fully functioning apps by the seed round using AI, what does that mean for the traditional definition of technical risk? Is tech risk dead at seed, or has it just evolved into something else? Vikram Taneja: The old definition of technical risk was “can they build it?” Although not entirely absent at the seed stage, I’d say it is becoming less relevant given the dramatically lower barrier to building software with AI tools. But what replaced it is actually harder to answer: “Is the tech defensible?” Not just “does it work?” but “does it compound?” Data moats, proprietary training sets, network effects built into the architecture — that’s the new measure of durability. In prior cycles, technical complexity alone created some natural protection. As a result, the technical risk conversation has shifted to focus on how a company defends itself over the next three to four years, especially as frontier labs move down the stack into application layers and start targeting entire verticals. Similarly, the distribution question shows up much earlier. “How can you get this to market?” is increasingly asked at the seed stage rather than later in the cycle. We’re also seeing increased competition for investors to secure larger stakes at seed that they would have previously pursued at the A round. This is driving investors to be more thorough at the seed stage, and founders have to be prepared to meet higher expectations across the board. When anyone can use AI tools to spin up a working app in a weekend, product execution happens fast, but moats can be incredibly shallow. At the seed stage, how are you separating a truly defensible platform from a beautifully executed wrapper? Taneja: In early 2025, we saw a wave of AI wrapper companies built on top of frontier models like OpenAI ‘s GPT, Anthropic ’s Claude or LLaMA, and a lot of capital flowed into them. What’s changed is that frontier LLMs have now clearly started to take more of a platform approach — moving into the application layers and beginning to pick off the low-hanging fruit. This is why defensibility becomes critical in AI investing. No platforms are totally defensible, but on some level, you have to ask that question now at the seed stage. We’re looking for platforms using proprietary data that can’t be replicated by AI, companies that have embedded deep domain expertise — areas where general-purpose AI still lacks industry context — into their workflows, or highly specialized ecosystems or niche markets that provide another layer of insulation in categories that are too targeted for frontier labs to pursue directly. Are you seeing a change in the actual headcount or makeup of seed teams? If AI handles the heavy lifting of the initial code, are these founders spending their seed capital on engineers, or are they shifting resources immediately to distribution and go-to-market? Taneja: There is still an engineering focus in the early stage, as there should be, but we are increasingly seeing product, sales, or partnership roles becoming sought after earlier than in the past. And the reason is, as you stated, that it’s easier to build a working prototype, or even a production-ready application, so the focus very quickly turns to establishing trials with customers or exploring distribution paths to dial in the product features. For strategic investors like AT&T Ventures, where we often do proof-of-concepts with potential portfolio companies, this is very exciting. We get a chance to work with companies earlier in their formation, can get real technical validation much earlier than otherwise, and can similarly try to find a path to collaborate more quickly. AT&T Ventures has traditionally played heavily in the Seed to Series B space. If institutional VCs are rushing to seed to grab larger stakes because the tech is mature, how does that change the competitive landscape for CVCs? Are you finding yourself competing directly with traditional multistage funds earlier than before? Taneja: The makeup of seed rounds has definitely changed. Multi-stage funds used to show up at Series A or B when there was enough traction to underwrite. Now they’re at seed because, as we discussed, the companies are mature enough, and they are trying to find winners earlier in the cycle. So yes, we’re in the same rooms as before. But I’d push back on the idea that we’re competing directly. A Tier 1 financial VC’s seed check and an AT&T Ventures seed check are different instruments. They are offering capital, brand, guidance and pattern recognition from backing hundreds of companies. We’re offering something a financial VC structurally does not: our network teams working with your product in a production environment, oftentimes before we even write the check, for example. That’s free diligence running in both directions. We’re validating the company, but it’s also receiving a real-world signal from one of the world’s largest network operators. For a seed-stage company that’s already solved the building problem and now needs distribution, that’s tangible value and complementary to what financial VC firms are providing. So that competitive pressure has actually sharpened our value proposition. It forces us to bring more than just capital to the table. Historically, corporate partners want to see enterprise readiness, security compliance and scalability — things a seed startup rarely has. If a seed startup has a fully functioning product but is still a two-person team, can an enterprise like AT&T actually run a pilot with them, or does the corporate integration timeline become a bottleneck? Taneja: It starts with strategic rationale. That has always been the entry point for us at AT&T Ventures, and that hasn’t changed. If that is in place, then it doesn’t always require full enterprise readiness to start a pilot. It can be a structured trial or a highly targeted engagement, depending on the company’s stage.