Good morning, AI reporter Sharon Goldman in for Allie Garfinkle, who is taking a well-deserved vacation!
One familiar name keeps popping up in my inbox lately—but not in the way you might expect. Amid the flood of pitches touting hot new AI startups, I keep seeing Jeff Dean. Yes, that Jeff Dean: Google’s chief scientist and longtime AI leader.
Best known for cofounding Google Brain and leading the company’s AI research since the early days of deep learning, Dean has also emerged as a prolific angel investor. Over the past two years, he’s quietly backed a whopping 37 AI startups—including Perplexity, DatologyAI, Emerald AI, Workhelix, Roboflow, Profluent Bio, Sakana AI, Latent Labs, P-1, World Labs, and Yutori. Most of his investments are early stage—often before Series A—when companies are still in stealth or just emerging from research labs. For example, Dean was involved in legal AI startup Harvey’s seed round.
Dean joined Google X in 2011 to explore the then-resurgent field of deep neural networks, went on to lead Google Brain in 2012, and in 2018 was named head of Google’s AI division. Today, he holds the title of chief scientist at both Google Research and Google DeepMind, the combined AI powerhouse formed in 2023.
But he’s no newcomer to angel investing. As early as 2016, he backed Poplar Homes, a tech-enabled property management company acquired by Evernest in early 2025. By 2022, he already had dozens of investments under his belt.
Over the past two years, though, Dean’s investment activity has taken on a clear shape—reflecting both his deep technical roots and his vision for where AI is heading. He’s backing startups building core AI tooling, particularly those focused on developer platforms, LLM infrastructure, and training efficiency. He’s also betting on a new generation of applications built natively for the LLM era, even if they are outside the Google ecosystem.
Another clear theme: AI for science. Dean has backed companies applying AI to problems in biology, chemistry, and genomics. It’s a natural extension of the “AI for scientific discovery” thread he championed during his time at both Google Brain and DeepMind—most notably with AlphaFold, DeepMind’s groundbreaking system for predicting protein structures, which has become a cornerstone of modern computational biology.
Finally, Dean is consistently backing deeply technical founding teams, often with academic pedigrees or open-source credentials. Many are led by former researchers from Google, DeepMind, OpenAI, or top universities. Yutori’s three cofounders, for example, all came from Meta but were also formerly researchers and faculty at Georgia Tech.
Interestingly, some of Dean’s bets are in areas that overlap—or even compete—with Google’s core business. Perplexity, for example, challenges Google Search. Dean, therefore, is surprisingly independent in his investing, even while he continues to hold one of the most senior AI roles inside Google.
“He’s been just incredibly active,” said Dylan Reid, a partner at Zetta Venture Partners, which has invested in three bio+AI companies with Dean. “He’s a real legend in AI, and a sort of AI guru at Google.”
That means his name brings cachet: “Having somebody like Jeff as an investor—an AI visionary on your cap table—I think it helps for sure,” Reid added. “It’s a sign that somebody in really advanced technology has looked at this and decided it’s interesting.”
Sharon Goldman
X: @sharongoldman
Email: sharon.goldman@fortune.com
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Venture Deals
- Xelix, a New York City-based developer of AI software in the accounts payable space, raised $160 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led the round and was joined by Passion Capital and LocalGlobe.
- Radical AI, a New York City-based developer of autonomous labs for materials R&D, raised $55 million in a seed round. RTX Ventures led the round and was joined by Nvidia, Alleycorp, and others.
- Rune Technologies, an Arlington, Va.-based developer of AI-enabled predictive software for military logistics, raised $24 million in Series A funding. Human Capital led the round and was joined by Pax VC, Washington Harbour Partners, and existing investors.
- Nexxa.ai, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company developing AI technology for industrial companies, raised $4.4 million in pre-seed funding. A16z speedrun led the round and was joined by Augment Ventures, Propeller Ventures, Plug and Play, and others.
- Crew, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based home services platform designed for short-term rental owners, raised $3 million in seed funding. RET Ventures led the round and was joined by Tandem Ventures, Element Ventures, Forever 6, and Convoi Ventures.
- Leadstory, a New York City-based news streaming and aggregation platform, raised $2.8 million in seed funding. Checker Media led the round and was joined by American Public Media Group’s Horizon Fund and existing investors.
- Chipp, a Fargo, N.D.-based no-code AI agent builder, raised $2 million in funding. Homegrown Ventures led the round and was joined by M25, gener8tor 1889, Cambrian Ventures, and Jutta Steiner.
Private Equity
- A consortium of investors led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives agreed to acquire a majority stake in NAVEX, an Oswego, Ore.-based developer of SaaS for ethics, risk, and compliance management, from BC Partners. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- Darktrace, a portfolio company of Thoma Bravo, acquired Mira Security, a Harmony, Pa.-based provider of network traffic visibility solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed.
- LongRange Capital acquired US Synthetic Corporation, an Orem, Utah-based provider of highly engineered polycrystalline diamond (PCD) technologies, from ChampionX Corporation.
Funds + Funds of Funds
- Omega Funds, a Boston, Ma.-based venture capital firm, raised $647 million for its eighth fund focused on investing in life sciences companies addressing unmet medical needs.
