| Over 300 organizations rely on The Information for exclusive insights into public and private companies, including in-depth analysis of the ways in which tech moves markets. Click here to contact our corporate and enterprise team to learn more. Welcome back! Over the last two years, several ex-OpenAI employees have left to found new startups. Now some former researchers at the ChatGPT maker are starting venture funds, extending a history of alums from buzzy startups who jump into investing. The latest example of this is Zero Shot Fund, started this summer by a group of former OpenAI employees who worked on research and engineering. The firm is targeting $100 million for its debut fund to back very young artificial intelligence startups, especially those founded by OpenAI alums, according to a person with knowledge of the fundraising. The fund and its plans haven't been reported. Its name is a nod to the zero-shot process in machine learning, in which a model can do a new task it wasn't explicitly trained on. Andrew Mayne and Evan Morikawa, who previously worked in engineering and research at OpenAI, founded the firm with Kelly Kovacs, formerly of venture firm 01 Advisors, and Brett Rounsaville, who worked with Mayne at Interdimensional, a consultancy that helps companies use AI in their businesses, according to LinkedIn posts and people familiar with the matter. All serve as general partners at the new firm. Startups founded by ex-OpenAI employees already have a pretty good track record. Former OpenAI employees founded Anthropic, whose valuation has shot up to $170 billion (more on its recent round here). More recently, OpenAI co-founder and former Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever started model maker Safe Superintelligence, and former Chief Operating Officer Mira Murati founded Thinking Machines Lab. Zero Shot Fund's Morikawa also helped launch a startup, a robotics company called Generalist, as a founding engineer. I wouldn't be surprised to see more such funds emerge, given that many OpenAI employees became a lot wealthier after the company arranged roughly $9 billion in stock sales for current and former employees. Already, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, started an investment firm in June 2024 with money from Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Meta Platforms executive Nat Friedman. It now has about $1.5 billion in assets under management, according to The Wall Street Journal. These investment forays follow a path established by alums from Facebook, Uber and Airbnb as those businesses took off. Often, the newly minted investors from these tech firms have leaned on their expertise to back startups in a particular niche. That was the case with Construct Capital, co-founded by former Uber executive Rachel Holt to focus on manufacturing, supply chain and industrial startups, including those started by Uber veterans. These focused funds are one example of the halo effect breakout startups can have, as their veterans use their years of experience and contacts to foster other startups in the same field. Established venture capital firms, along with directing much of their staff to focus on AI investments, have also recruited from the big AI startups. Early-stage venture firm Felicis hired Peter Deng, former vice president of consumer at OpenAI, earlier this year. Spark Capital, another early-stage firm, hired OpenAI's former head of product, Fraser Kelton, in 2023. Of course, experience at top AI firms doesn't guarantee these new venture capitalists will make smart investments. But some limited partners tell me that the new funds could gain an edge courting technical founders that may be out of reach for more generalist firms. For venture, AI is the only game in town. | 
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