Substrate
Elena Petrova
@epetrova_sys
GPU memory fabric that lets inference clusters share KV-cache across nodes.
AI InfraAmsterdam, NLSeedOUTBOUNDCOLD START
Second-time technical founder — quiet exit, no fanfare
Founder Score
A running score for this person, not this pitch — it persists across applications and never resets to zero.
52Jan 14, 25
Surfaced: shipped a KV-cache sharing patch to an open inference server
68Apr 02, 25
Prior small acquihire (2022) confirmed via public record
79Jun 11, 25
Benchmark repo shows 2.3x throughput gain, reproduced independently
3-Axis Score
Founder, market, and idea-fit are scored independently and never averaged — disagreement between them is signal, not noise.
Founder
Is this person capable of pulling this off?
82improving
Second exit, undersold on LinkedIn (no announcement). Shipped a reproducible benchmark rather than a deck. Pattern matches a builder who has already learned the hard lessons once.
2 evidence points backing this score
Market
Is this a market worth building a fund-scale outcome in?
69improving
Cross-node KV-cache sharing is becoming a bottleneck as inference clusters scale; early but real inbound interest from infra teams.
Idea vs Market
Does the specific idea survive contact with that market?
73stable
Idea survives as-is; even if hyperscalers build this in-house, mid-market clusters remain addressable.
1 evidence point backing this score
Trust Score
2 verified · 1 claimed · 0 contradicted
Every claim this founder made, traced to a source and rated by how well it holds up.
Verified — independently cross-checked against an outside sourceClaimed — founder's word only — not yet checkedInferred — reasoned from evidence, not stated outrightContradicted — checked, and it does not hold up
product2.3x throughput gain on shared KV-cache benchmark
VerifiedChecked: Reproduced benchmark on independent hardware
“feat: cross-node KV-cache sharing over RDMA” — github.com/epetrova/substrate-kv@5b21e4
teamPrior startup quietly acquihired in 2022
VerifiedChecked: Public acquisition filing
“Small infra team acquihired by cloud vendor, 2022” — Acquisition record
traction3 design partners in early conversations
ClaimedNo signed LOIs yet.
Legibility
A great talker and a great builder can score the same on a deck. This strips out how well the pitch was told, and scores what was actually built.
Raw · the substance, stripped of delivery82
Polished · how good it sounded in the room75
Correction applied — the gap between substance and delivery is removed.
Corrected · what we actually act on82
SUBSTANCE RECOVERED FROM FLUENCY PENALTY