Aaref Hilaly

Aaref Hilaly, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures

Aaref Hilaly is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) where he focuses on seed and Series A investments in AI-powered applications, machine learning and cloud infrastructure.12 He joined BCV in 2020 after spending seven years as a partner at Sequoia Capital.13

Prior to becoming an investor, Hilaly co-founded two software companies:

• CenterRun (2000-2003), a pioneer in datacenter automation, which he sold to Sun Microsystems13
• Clearwell Systems (2005-2011), an early SaaS e-discovery application for legal teams. As CEO, Hilaly grew Clearwell from a handful of engineers to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Symantec acquired Clearwell for $410 million in 2011.13

After the Clearwell acquisition, Hilaly spent a year as Vice President of Engineering at Symantec.3

Some of Hilaly's current investments and board memberships at BCV include:

• Contextual AI - a platform for bringing large language models into the enterprise3
• Cleanlab - improves the quality of data used to train large language models3
• Momento - an intelligent, serverless cache for developers3
• Felt - a simple, browser-first mapping app3
• Clari - a revenue operations platform3

Hilaly holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics & Economics from Oxford University, an MA in Economics from McGill University, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.13