Mark McQuade
About Mark McQuade
Mark McQuade is the Co-Founder and CEO of Arcee AI and is based in San Francisco, California. His LinkedIn profile lists Arcee.ai as his experience and Sir Sandford Fleming College as his education.
Before Arcee, TechCrunch reported that he worked at Hugging Face and had earlier spent time at Rackspace and the computer vision startup Roboflow. At Hugging Face he and Brian Benedict saw enterprise customers struggle to adopt generative AI. Those customers distrusted closed-source AI APIs but also worried about the security of open models. That led him to build Arcee with Brian Benedict and Roboflow's head of machine learning, Jacob Solawetz.
Arcee AI first built a platform for training and deploying language models inside a company's own cloud, aimed at regulated industries such as legal, healthcare, insurance and financial services. In July 2024 it announced a $24M Series A led by Emergence Capital. McQuade has also co-authored research, including the Roboflow 100 object detection benchmark and the mergekit model-merging toolkit paper from Arcee.
Crunchbase lists one investment and one portfolio company for Mark McQuade. It records no lead investments and no exits. The Crunchbase profile gives no company name or year for that investment. We found no public announcement of an angel round with him as a named investor. Angel investing appears to be a minor activity next to his work running Arcee.
We found no public statement from McQuade on the stages, sectors or geographies he backs. We also found no public statement on check size or on what he looks for in a pitch. Founders should not assume he invests actively. Anyone with a relevant connection, such as open-source model work, enterprise AI or small language models, could ask for an introduction through a mutual contact. The topics he talks about publicly are open-weight models, efficient model training and enterprise AI.
- crunchbase.com/person/mark-mcquade-c819
- linkedin.com/in/mark-mcquade
- arcee.ai/blog/arcee-is-a-secure-enterprise-focused-platform-for-buildi
- arcee.ai/blog/arcee-ai-secures-24m-series-a-to-transform-the-landscape
- venturebeat.com/ai/small-language-models-rising-as-arcee-ai-lands-24m-
- scholar.google.com/citations?user=5_1MVq0AAAAJ&hl=en
Investing activity
Mark McQuade has made 1 investment according to Crunchbase across 1 portfolio company, and has founded 1 company.
Deals
Frequently asked questions about Mark McQuade
Is Mark McQuade an angel investor?
Crunchbase lists one investment and one portfolio company for him, with no lead investments or exits. His main role is Co-Founder and CEO of Arcee AI.
What is Mark McQuade's check size?
He has not made a check size public in anything we found. We have not estimated one.
What does Mark McQuade do?
He is Co-Founder and CEO of Arcee AI, based in San Francisco. Arcee builds language models and tools for enterprises. He previously worked at Hugging Face, Rackspace and Roboflow.
What stage and sectors does Mark McQuade invest in?
He has not publicly stated a stage or sector focus. His own work is in open-source and enterprise AI, but that does not confirm what he invests in.
How can founders contact Mark McQuade?
He has a public LinkedIn profile. A warm introduction from someone who knows him or works at Arcee is likely the better route for a pitch, as he has not published an angel pitch process.
Where is Mark McQuade based?
Mark McQuade is based in San Francisco, California, United States.
How can founders reach Mark McQuade?
Founders on Lounge can see Mark McQuade's contact details in AI Investor Contacts (paid plans), check for a warm introduction through members who worked with them under Warm Paths, and add Mark McQuade to their Investor Pipeline to track the conversation.