Mike Volpi

Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi (born 13 December 1966) is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He worked as an engineer, eventually becoming chief strategy officer at Cisco Systems during the company’s growth era, acquiring over 70 companies in less than five years. He co-founded Index Ventures’ San Francisco office with Danny Rimer in 2009, and currently serves as general partner at Hanabi Capital.

Early life and education Volpi was born in Milan, Italy. When he was five, his family moved to Tokyo, Japan, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 1984 to attend college at Stanford University. After working at HP for several years, he returned to Stanford to earn an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business in 1994.

Career Volpi began his career at Hewlett Packard's optoelectronics division in 1989 where he was both in engineering and marketing. he was promoted to the chief strategy office working for CEO John Chambers until 2000. Some press speculated he was heir apparent to Chambers. Moving into an operational role as a senior vice president and general manager, he led the routing and switching teams, then co-led the routing and service provider group with Prem Jain until 2007. During this time Cisco's first Carrier Routing System product was announced, the CRS-1, in 2004.

After Cisco in 2007 he became entrepreneur in residence (EIR) at Sequoia Capital. A few months later, he was appointed CEO of Joost, an Internet startup focused on online TV which was founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In 2009, Volpi joined Index Ventures as a partner, but concurrently retained his position of chairman of Joost. In September 2009, Skype's founders filed a lawsuit against Volpi for alleged use of confidential information in conjunction with the proposed divestiture of Skype from eBay. Volpi was also removed by Joost shareholders from his role as company chair, with Joost releasing a statement at the time saying, "The company and its Board of Directors is conducting an investigation into Mr. Volpi's actions during his tenure as CEO and as Chairman."

At Index, Volpi invested in early-stage companies, primarily across autonomous driving, open source, and artificial intelligence. Volpi has served on the boards of Index portfolio companies, including Aurora, Blue Bottle Coffee, Confluent, Covariant, Kong Inc., Scale AI, Sonos, Wealthfront, During Volpi's time at Index, the firm grew its office in San Francisco to an equal presence on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Volpi co-founded Hanabi Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, in 2025. Volpi serves as general partner. The firm invests in artificial intelligence, software infrastructure, and similar technology company startups. As of 2026, notable investments include Cognition AI and Mind Robotics.

Councils and boards Mike Volpi sits on the boards of a number of public and private companies in which he has invested, including ClickHouse, Cohere, Kong, Scale, and a board member of Ericsson. He was an independent director for Exor, and now serves on the European investment firm's partners council.

Volpi also serves on the boards of Stanford Health Care and Ferrari N.V..

Personal life Volpi is trilingual in English, Italian and Japanese,

Awards Forbes Midas List: World's Smartest Tech Investors, 2015 MIT Technology Review - Innovators Under 35, 1999 Network World: 1999 Power Issue – 25 Most Powerful People in Networking The New York Times' and CB Insights' 2018 list of the top 100 venture capitalists worldwide featured Volpi at number 34.