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Overview
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Experience
Introduction
Suzana advises leading startups in AI, robotics, data centers, infrastructure, photonics, and other frontier technologies on financing, governance, equity compensation, secondary transactions, and growth strategy.
At the forefront of the global AI ecosystem, Suzana Gadzo represents visionary founders and industry-disrupting companies confronting unprecedented technical and commercial challenges. She guides clients from formation through product launch, scale, and ultimately IPO, often working with founders from inception as they grow. Her work includes advising companies such as World Labs, Aaru, and other startups, as well as university spinout companies built around advanced professor-led research.
Suzana has strength advising research-driven companies emerging from prominent universities, including matters involving Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara founders, researchers, Ph.Ds., and Nobel laureates. She understands the complex IP, governance, and commercialization issues that arise when professors and researchers launch technology companies while maintaining academic and teaching engagements. Her work spans foundational models, robotics, data center infrastructure, photonics, and other technologies reshaping global markets and human progress.
Suzana regularly negotiates complex venture financings on both the investor and company side, working closely with top-tier venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. She represents investors, including A Capital and SV Angel and its growth fund, in investments involving many of the world’s trailblazing private technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, Anduril, and Cerebras. Her practice also includes high-volume secondary transactions, where she helps move billions of dollars in private company equity each month, representing both investors and CEO sellers in sophisticated liquidity transactions.
Clients value Suzana’s clarity, conviction, commercial judgement, and deep commitment to technology and progress. She is a trusted adviser in boardrooms and a hands-on partner to founders, investors, and executive teams shaping the next generation of transformative companies.
Born in former Yugoslavia and raised in West Germany, Suzana is trilingual and has lived in multiple countries, equipping her to serve a diverse client base with nuance, empathy, and global perspective.
Education & credentials
- DePaul University College of Law, J.D., Executive Editor, DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal
- The University of Chicago, B.A., English Language and Literature
- California
- DLA Piper, Palo Alto, CA, Attorney, 2014-2021
- Represented a research-driven investment firm with US$1.4 billion assets under management, in various physical and life sciences investments that include companies such an artificial intelligence, computer vision and machine learning platform for creators, film, augmented reality, virtual reality, and game makers.*
- Represented one of the largest venture capital firms with US$20 billion in assets under management, in an array of investments that include companies such as a robotic process automation company.*
- Represented a worldwide Spanish coding academy in its Spain to Delaware conversion and subsequent series of financings.*
- Represented a maker of smart electrical panels in its formation, SAFE financing, and series financings.*
- Represented a medical technology entity for therapeutic uses of platelets in its formation and series financings.*
- Led and advised a next generation satellite, radio frequency (RF) antenna, waveguide, filter, and integrated subsystem products innovator in its subsidiary formation and entry into the U.S. market.*
- Represented a power plant equipment supplier backed by funds established by Forbes list most influential businessmen in its secured bridge financing and series financings.*
- Represented a knowledge platform that accelerates knowledge discovery to increase profitability for industrial and oil and gas companies in its multiple financings.*
- Represented the venture capital arm of a prominent Fortune 500 company, in connection with its investment in companies such as a developer of eye and gesture tracking solutions designed for mobile and wearable devices, and its investment in a developer of copper nanoparticle electronic printing.*
- Represented a prominent publicly traded company in its acquisition of a Mexico based messaging platform along with its numerous international subsidiaries.*
- Represented a smart-home security leader in its acquisition of a home security hardware and software company.*
- Represented a global growth private equity firm with an investment fund of over US$7 billion, in its multiple acquisitions to create a world-class enterprise resource planning, reporting, and corporate performance management empire.*
- Represented an industry leader in analytics and smart data warehouse solutions for optimal business intelligence in its acquisition by a Fortune 500 multinational computer technology corporation.*
*Prior experience
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