According to documents from the SEC, AI pioneer Andrew Ng's AI Fund, a startup incubator supporting small teams in using artificial intelligence to address critical issues, plans to raise over $120 million for its second fund.
The documents indicate that AI Venture Fund II has already raised $69.75 million from 13 partners, with approximately $50 million remaining to be invested.
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Andrew Ng is the founder of Google Brain's deep learning project, a co-founder of Coursera, and one of the recently appointed members of Amazon's board. He became one of the most renowned figures in the AI community when he joined Baidu as Chief Scientist in 2014. He left Baidu in 2017 to promote several AI startup projects, including the DeepLearning.ai course and Landing AI, a startup developing AI tools for manufacturing companies.
Ng launched the AI Fund in 2018, raising $175 million, serving as the incubator's GP and leading its direction. (In the aforementioned SEC documents, he is referred to as the "managing member of the general partner" of AI Venture Fund II). The idea is to provide funding during the seed and A rounds of a company's lifecycle, allowing teams to work relatively privately until they are ready, and connecting them with Ng's extensive professional network.
Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, and SoftBank Group were the initial supporters of the AI Fund. Crunchbase lists 38 portfolio companies, including the AI observability platform WhyLabs, Ng's own Landing AI, and the AI application building tool Baseten.
The $120 million scale of AI Venture Fund II will be significantly smaller than the first AI Fund. Nonetheless, this is more than double what Ng initially hoped to raise.
This could be another potential sign of an AI bubble, especially considering the noisy generative AI field might be shrinking.
Key Points:
- 💡 AI pioneer Andrew Ng plans to raise over $120 million for the second fund of his AI Fund.
- 💡 The AI Fund's concept is to provide funding during the seed and A rounds of a company's lifecycle, allowing teams to work relatively privately until they are ready, and connecting them with Ng's extensive professional network.
- 💡 The $120 million scale of AI Venture Fund II will be significantly smaller than the first AI Fund, which could be another potential sign of an AI bubble.