A new venture capital fund founded by former OpenAI employees has made its first close towards a $100 million target, aiming to invest in promising artificial intelligence startups. The fund, named Zero Shot, is backed by several OpenAI alumni who have transitioned into venture capital roles.
The founding partners include Evan Morikawa, former head of applied engineering at OpenAI during the launches of DALL·E and ChatGPT; Andrew Mayne, OpenAI's original prompt engineer and podcast host; and Shawn Jain, a former OpenAI engineer and researcher. They are joined by venture capitalist Kelly Kovacs, previously of 01A, and Brett Rounsaville, formerly of Twitter and Disney.
From Colleagues to Capital Partners
The founders, who have been friends for years, decided to launch the fund after consistently being approached for consulting by other venture capital firms and founder friends seeking advice on AI. "Maybe we should do our own fund, because we think we have a pretty good sense of where things are headed, and we have this great access to people who we think are incredible builders," Andrew Mayne told TechCrunch.
After initial conversations with institutions and family offices, the partners closed their first $20 million. They have already begun deploying capital, writing checks for at least three startups.
Initial Investments and Strategic Focus
Zero Shot's first disclosed investment is in Worktrace AI, a startup founded by early OpenAI product manager Angela Jiang. The company is developing an AI-based management software platform to help enterprises automate tasks and recently raised a $10 million seed round.
The fund has also invested in Foundry Robotics, a company working on next-generation, AI-enhanced factory robotics, which raised a $13.5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures. A third investment has been made in a startup that remains in stealth mode.
Leveraging Insider Knowledge to Avoid Hype
The partners state their deep experience with AI development gives them an edge in identifying viable startups and spotting overhyped trends. Andrew Mayne expressed skepticism about most "vibe coding" platforms, predicting that model makers will quickly make such subscriptions feel unnecessary.
Evan Morikawa is critical of many current "ergo-centric video data companies" in robotics, which focus on embodiment training data. "There’s a lot of hoping and praying going on right now that someone in the research world will figure out how to transfer the embodiment gap," Morikawa said, adding that such a solution is "nowhere near possible."
Mayne is similarly bearish on most startups developing "digital twins," having conducted due diligence that concluded standard large language model (LLM) approaches work just as effectively.
Advisory Support and Future Outlook
In addition to the investing founders, Zero Shot has enlisted several high-profile advisors who will receive a share of the fund's carried interest. The advisory group includes Diane Yoon, OpenAI’s former head of people; Steve Dowling, the former head of communications at OpenAI and Apple; and Luke Miller, a former product leader at OpenAI.
The fund's strategy hinges on predicting the non-linear development path of AI models. "There is a real skill in knowing how to predict where these models will be going next, because it’s extremely not obvious. It’s not linear," Morikawa explained. The team aims to close its $100 million fund to continue backing what they identify as foundational AI companies.