Founded in March 2016,[1] its mission is to be an active, strategic partner during a startup's growth, typically investing between Series A and D. The fund is managed by Michelle Gonzalez, formerly of Google.

The main intention of this initiative was to ensure that better entrepreneurial support would be given to those who reside outside big metropolises in India, removing the inevitability of having to relocate to such places.

[1] On April 11, 2017, it was reported that the security company Synack had raised $21 million from Microsoft Ventures, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Singtel.

[10] In September 2019, M12 participated in a Series B funding round in Applied Intuition, a software company specializing in products for autonomous vehicles (AVs).

[13] Also in March 2020, M12 announced it would lead a $22 million Series B funding round in San Francisco-based fraud prevention platform Arkose Labs[14] In April 2018, Microsoft Ventures changed its name to M12, to avoid confusion with a previous accelerator program of the same name.