Evgenia Plotnikova is a General Partner leading investments across AI, infrastructure, and automation. Her first love was political science, which still underpins how she invests: she is drawn to moments when a step change in technology meets a structural need the market has underestimated. Her conviction has driven some of Dawn’s most defining investments including Dataiku, the platform for AI success; Fonoa, solving tax compliance across hundreds of jurisdictions; and inforcer, delivering AI to millions of small businesses through the power of Microsoft. She has also supported her founders through major exits, including to Intel, Nvidia, and Kiteworks.

As one of Dawn’s earliest employees, Evgenia knows what it means to be in the room when something is small and to stay through every stage of the growth journey. She is a superconnector whose greatest joy is putting her network to work for founders; unlocking new hires, partnerships, and markets. She gravitates to founders with raw ambition and the instinct to keep raising the bar, who also build with trust, self-awareness and empathy at the core. These values reflect her own path. Born in a working-class family on the border between Russia and Ukraine and educated on a scholarship in France and the US, she learned to start from scratch more than once and knows what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong. 

Evgenia is the youngest woman in Europe to be internally promoted to General Partner, a Kauffman Fellow, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree. Before Dawn, she spent over a decade advising and investing at Atomico, TPG Capital, and J.P. Morgan, and studied at Sciences Po Paris and at the Wharton School.