OpenAI Startup Fund Raises $15M
The OpenAI Startup Fund has raised $15 million from two unnamed investors, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing first reported in TechCrunch. The venture capital fund, which is connected but separately managed from OpenAI, applied the financing round to the creation of a special purpose vehicle (SPV), a subsidiary created by a parent company to isolate financial risk and common for aggregating funds for investment in projects that might not align directly with the main fund’s strategic goals. The OpenAI Startup Fund SPV II, L.P., is the second SPV for the fund after raising $10 million in February.
OpenAI Fund
The OpenAI Startup Fund is under the management and sole partnership of Ian Hathaway, who previously worked with Haystack and has been involved with the fund since 2021. Hathaway took official control of the fund in April after OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman ceded the role over questions of conflict of interest since he had a lot of say in how the fund invests.
The OpenAI Startup Fund invests in young AI companies. The portfolio includes companies include legal and professional services AI startup Harvey, clinical AI platform Ambience Healthcare, video editing AI startup Descript, and humanoid robotics startups Figure AI and 1X. The fund has also run two Converge accelerators for very early startups. The fund has raised $175 million in total, with a gross net asset value of $325 million at the end of last year.
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