Former OpenAI staff start Zero Shot fund aiming for $100M

In short: A new investment fund called Zero Shot, started by several former OpenAI employees, is aiming to raise $100 million and says it has already raised $20 million and made a few investments.

What happened

Zero Shot is a new venture capital fund. Venture capital is money that investors put into young companies that are still growing, kind of like backing a new restaurant before it opens its doors.

The founders told TechCrunch they have completed a first “close” of $20 million. That means they have secured the first chunk of money from backers, and can start investing while they keep raising more. Their target for the full first fund is $100 million.

Three of the founding partners previously worked at OpenAI: Evan Morikawa, Andrew Mayne, and Shawn Jain. They are joined by investor Kelly Kovacs and Brett Rounsaville, who previously worked at Twitter and Disney and is also CEO at Mayne’s consulting company, Interdimensional.

Zero Shot says it has already written a few checks. TechCrunch reports the fund invested in Worktrace AI, a company building software that helps businesses figure out which tasks to automate, and then automate them. It also invested in Foundry Robotics, which is working on factory robots that use AI.

The group also named several advisors with past ties to OpenAI, including former people and communications leaders.

Why it matters

Money and advice from well-connected investors can strongly shape which AI products get built next. A fund led by former OpenAI staff may draw attention from startups that want investors who have worked closely with popular AI systems like ChatGPT.

Source: TechCrunch AI