A group of early OpenAI employees just banded together to launch their own venture capital firm. The new firm, cleverly named Zero Shot in a nod to a popular term in artificial intelligence training, recently completed its first major round of fundraising. The founders told reporters they successfully secured the first $20 million toward their ultimate goal of managing a $100 million initial fund. The partners wasted no time putting that money to work, having already written checks to several promising new technology startups.
The founding team of Zero Shot features several familiar faces from the early days of OpenAI. Evan Morikawa previously served as the head of applied engineering during the massive public launches of DALL-E and ChatGPT. Andrew Mayne served as the company’s original prompt engineer and later launched his own consulting business. Shawn Jain also worked as a researcher and engineer at OpenAI before leaving to start his own software company. The former coworkers decided to team up after realizing they had a unique advantage in judging the future of artificial intelligence.
Two other highly experienced professionals round out the core leadership team. Kelly Kovacs brings deep venture capital experience to the group, having previously served as a founding partner at the growth-stage firm 01A. Brett Rounsaville, who previously worked at major companies like Twitter and Disney, also joined the partnership. Andrew Mayne noted that the core group of OpenAI alumni has been close friends for many years. They worked side by side long before the general public ever heard of ChatGPT.
After leaving OpenAI, the founders realized their expertise was in incredibly high demand. Both wealthy venture capitalists and young startup founders constantly begged them for advice on the rapidly changing technology market. During these consulting sessions, the group noticed a massive disconnect. They saw traditional investment firms throwing millions of dollars at artificial intelligence startups that simply did not make any sense. They decided they could do a much better job picking winners because they actually understand the complex science behind the technology.
With their initial $20 million secured, the Zero Shot team quickly started making their first investments. They recently backed a new startup called Worktrace AI, founded by former OpenAI product manager Angela Jiang. Her company builds smart software that helps large corporations determine exactly which daily office tasks they can safely automate with artificial intelligence. Zero Shot also poured money into Foundry Robotics, a startup trying to build the next generation of smart factory robots. The partners confirmed that they also funded a third startup that remains secret.
Because the founders actually helped build the world’s most famous artificial intelligence models, they know exactly which startup ideas to avoid. Andrew Mayne heavily criticizes startups trying to build subscription-based coding assistants. He firmly believes that giant model makers like OpenAI and Google will quickly build those same tools into their base products for free, instantly destroying those smaller startups. Evan Morikawa shares similar skepticism toward companies that collect video data to train robots. He knows exactly how difficult it is to transfer video data into physical robotic movement, and he believes many of these startups are just hoping for a miracle breakthrough that does not currently exist.
To help them make the best possible decisions, the Zero Shot founders recruited a powerful list of industry advisors. The firm brought on Diane Yoon, the former head of human resources at OpenAI, to help them judge the leadership teams of new startups. Steve Dowling, a communication expert who previously worked at both Apple and OpenAI, will also lend his advice. Luke Miller, another former product leader at OpenAI, rounds out the advisory board. These advisors will receive a small share of the profits the fund eventually generates. With this deep roster of talent, Zero Shot hopes to become the smartest investment fund operating in the artificial intelligence space today.
