Rick Nucci

Rick Nucci is the Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures, Google's artificial intelligence-focused venture capital fund, and is currently based in San Francisco, California. Before joining the firm in 2022, he served as the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the cloud computing platform Flexiant, leading the enterprise software company until its acquisition by OpencLOUD in 2015. Earlier in his career, he held software engineering and product management roles at IBM and earned a degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. In his current investing capacity, he has led more than 20 investments in early-stage technology companies globally, including directing the 2024 Series B funding round for the AI coding assistant Replit. His professional background and current focus center on scaling enterprise businesses and funding startups developing artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud infrastructure.