Ashton Kutcher raised a $243 million investment fund in just five weeks
Is A.I. the new Crypto?
Friends,
We have a new contender in the A.I. funds of the next transformational moment in technology. Ashton Kutcher raised a $243 million investment fund in just five weeks, for you guessed it, Artificial Intelligence.
Ashton Kutcher says your company will probably be 'out of business' if you're 'sleeping' on AI
Ashton Kutcher sounds like a man ahead of the curve!
“We pulled the fund together in about five weeks,” Kutcher said Thursday in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We have a base of LPs that have been with us for years on end.”
As celebrities used to go into Crypto or NFTs, now it’s A.I. The land of grifters and prompt-engineers? Considering that prompting is likely to go extinct on the interface in a few years, it’s all a bit amusing.
Kutcher has quietly embarked on a successful tech investing career through his fund A-Grade Investments, which he founded in 2010 along with entertainment manager Guy Oseary and billionaire Ron Burkle.
On May 1st, 2023 it was announced, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures announced the firm closed an oversubscribed $240 million AI fund and will invest $35 million to $50 million into each company it selects.
Only $240 million, come on man! Isn’t this moment in time, a bit more unique?
Maybe you can come on CNBC and talk to us about it, oh you did just that! Excellent. Excellent bro.
Kutcher’s new fund plans to put $243 million toward artificial intelligence startups, the tech industry’s current hottest category. The portfolio already includes investments in AI startup darlings OpenAI, Stability AI Ltd. and Anthropic.
The bro culture is looking supportive.
How good is Kutcher’s track record so far? Investments in companies like Uber, Airbnb, Spotify and Warby Parker have paid off handsomely and entirely removed the pressure off of needing to appear in movies and shows just for the paycheck. This stuff isn’t too difficult for you Ashton, you must be a man of the future.
During a panel, Ashton Kutcher said that companies not using AI tools like ChatGPT will shutter.
Another Venture Capitalist doing the hype-rounds to pad their pockets and Hollywood inflated wallets, sounds a lot like crypto! Oh. What can you expect from Silicon Valley these days? A lot of layoffs and a dead San Francisco, needs some good headline distractions.
Next “Absolute Transformation”
With the new fund, assets under management at Los Angeles-based Sound Ventures LLC are about $1 billion, the firm said. Kutcher said the firm had surveyed its portfolio companies to see how they were embracing AI, and that the sector would mark “the next absolute transformation for technology.”
“I have young kids, and I like my kids a lot,” he said. “I like spending time with them.”
Sounds like actors like to play Venture Capital games, more time with the kids and the fam.
Brave New World to get More Rich
“Sound’s AI fund will invest in foundation model layer businesses, including large language models as well as stable diffusion models,” Epstein told dot.LA. “Since one of the biggest bottlenecks to building foundation models is access to technical talent, we will focus on businesses with exceptional technical talent at the helm, as well as access to cloud and compute.”
Show me the way, Ashton, show me the way to the future.
Kutcher is a partner at Los Angeles-based Sound Ventures alongside Effie Epstein and Guy Oseary. The firm’s funds made investments in companies including Airbnb Inc., Uber Technologies Inc., Spotify Technology SA and Pinterest Inc., its website shows.
Sound Ventures’ attention toward artificial intelligence comes amid heightened interest in the sector, in part due to Microsoft Corp.’s $10 billion bet on Sam Altman’s OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
Ashton, tell us some “good stories” about A.I, we all dying to hear them.
Thanks for reading!