Ashton Kutcher’s $1 billion asset management fund is looking to get into the market of the moment: A.I.
The actor known for his work on That ’70s Show and Two and a Half Men launched Sound Ventures 15 years ago with music manager and fellow general partner Guy Oseary.
The company, which has since brought on board a third general partner, Effie Epstein, has now raised $240 million to invest in A.I.
The round was oversubscribed, though Sound Ventures has not revealed by how much.
The venture capital firm also didn’t confirm the type of A.I. business it was on the lookout for—simply saying it wanted to be part of a revolutionary technological shift.
“We believe this is potentially the most significant technology we will experience since the advent of the internet,” Kutcher said in a press release.
“The foundation model layer companies are defining the category, and, in our view, they have the power to transform businesses and everyday life. That is a conversation we want to be in.”
The fund is no stranger to investing in technologies developing products like large language models and chatbots—it has stakes in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, A.I. safety and research company Anthropic, and text-to-image model makers Stability AI.
Oseary adds: “We anticipate that A.I. is going to play an impactful role in everything we do—including entertainment, an industry we know well. The companies we are backing will be at the forefront of this powerful innovation, and Sound Ventures is excited to bring our distinct experiences and connectivity to responsibly support these A.I. foundational platforms.”
The firm adds that artificial intelligence has reached a “stage of usability” for both businesses and consumers, which has led to significant growth in the sector.
Kutcher’s announcement banks to some extent on the continued development of A.I.—a result not everyone wants to see come to fruition.
ChatGPT has already claimed its first scalp, with online education company Chegg seeing its shares tank 49% this week after acknowledging that the large language model is starting to hurt its business as more students use free A.I. chatbots for homework instead of paying for its study tools.
Will regulation pose a problem?
In March the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak signed an open letter calling for a pause in the development of advanced artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT until more regulation is put in place.
Although some 27,000 technology bosses have signed the letter, not everyone in Big Tech agrees—Microsoft founder Bill Gates, for example, has questioned how useful the pause will be following admissions that there will never be an agreement across the globe to halt development.
The launch of ChatGPT prompted rival products, such as Google’s Bard and spinoffs like Microsoft’s Bing—which haven’t been without their hiccups.
Wealth of experience
For founders wondering which VCs to work with, Sound Ventures positions itself as a strong contender.
It highlights that it has “deep experience in two industries at the heart of generative A.I.—technology and entertainment.”
Epstein adds: “We have been investing in artificial intelligence for the past decade, and we believe that this moment in history will dictate the trajectory of this technology.
“Our team is well-positioned to continue investing in, and supporting, exceptional founders that are thoughtfully shaping the future through artificial intelligence.”
The group added that the new A.I. fund will work alongside Sound Ventures’ existing early-stage funds.
The L.A.-based team—which now manages $1 billion in assets—has had a series of successful exits in recent years including hosting platform Airbnb and taxi app Uber.
Sound Ventures is in a “very unique space,” Epstein told CNBC this week, given the fact it is able to invest in competitors of its existing investments.
“We’re essentially taking an ecosystem bet with our investments in OpenAI, Stability AI, and Anthropic,” she explained. “We know a model will emerge; we want to be in all the players that are likely to be that winner.”
Kutcher compared the current A.I. race to Web 1.0: “You had Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and 12 other search engines. I think a lot of these large transformer models are very reinforcing, and I think the likelihood that one, two, or maybe three of these models can come to pervasive models is really, really high.”
Sound Ventures did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
