Introducing the Fall 2026 Agents at Scale fellows

This fall we're running the second cohort of the Agents at Scale Fellowship, a part-time, remote program that puts students on real applied AI work inside the firm. Our summer intern was our first fellow, working on an agent for competitive landscape analysis. We now run the program every semester.

Scale invests at the Series A and B stages, and a growing share of how we do that runs on software we build ourselves. Our technology team builds the models, infrastructure, and internal tools the firm uses to find companies, evaluate them, and support them after we invest. That includes scoring systems that surface companies worth a look, a platform for tracking portfolio KPIs and preparing for board meetings, and agent tooling that connects our CRM, our contact network, and company data in one place. We believe software and data are becoming core infrastructure for how venture firms operate, and we would rather build that infrastructure with sharp people than describe it from the outside. The fellowship is one way we do that.

The response was larger than we expected. We received hundreds of applications from undergraduates, MBA students, and PhD candidates across a long list of programs. With two spots to give, we interviewed as many people as we could and asked the finalists for a short project proposal. It was a very hard decision, and several people who weren't ultimately selected are joining Scale Builders, the community described below.

‍Navya Prabhushankar is an MBA candidate at Columbia Business School (Class of 2027). Originally trained as a chemical engineer, Navya transitioned into the startup world, helping scale early-stage B2B SaaS companies, most recently leading solutions engineering at Logik.ai through its acquisition by ServiceNow. During business school, she gained venture investing experience at Interplay Ventures and SemperVirens, while also building internal AI agents to streamline investment workflows. Navya is excited to combine investing with building, a mix that made the conversation with our team so easy.

‍Mark Dillemuth is pursuing a dual MBA through Yale SOM and HEC Paris, graduating in May 2027. Before business school, Mark spent seven years at Cigna as an actuary and data scientist, working across pricing, underwriting, FP&A, and internal machine learning projects. Mark has since formed the Global Foundry running venture advisory and AI training programs. Mark is interested in applying actuarial and quantitative methods to AI and health tech ventures.

Both fellows proposed and scoped their own projects, and each will build a working proof of concept to present to the firm. We chose them because we plan to use what they produce.

The fellowship kicked off this month and runs through mid-December. The fellows work in a dedicated Slack, with access to the relevant repositories and the API tooling they need, and they work directly with our data science team throughout.

The fellowship is just one piece of a broader effort we're calling Scale Builders, a community for the wider group of students we met through this process. It's a place to collaborate on open source (ours and student-led projects), meet other venture-curious students from strong programs, and hear about opportunities at our portfolio companies, future fellowship cohorts, and events.

If you're a student who builds things and wants to be part of it, write to fellowship@scalevp.com.