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Ashton Kutcher ’s VC house , Sound Ventures , co - lead by cosmopolitan partners Guy Oseary and Effie Epstein , is betting on AI — including with an investment inFei - Fei Li ’s World Labs , the investors confirmed onstage atTechCrunch Disrupt 2024on Tuesday .
The startup , founded by Li , the Stanford prof dub the “ Godmother of AI , ” has already lift $ 230 million from investor including a16z , NEA , and Radical Ventures , valuing the party at over $ 1 billion . It aims to uprise “ enceinte world models ” that will be able to see and interact with the 3D earth and is targeting game companies and movie studios as its first customer — the latter an arena where a Hollywood player - turn - investor could have stimulation .
Announced last year , Sound Ventures ’ $ 265 million AI fund has indue in various large language model and AI companies , including OpenAI , Anthropic , Hugging Face , Stability AI , and Magic.dev .
Of take note , Kutcher said today that the business firm has n’t yet sell any of its OpenAI plowshare — a confirmation that these investor conceive the troupe will continue to get even prominent .
The team is also interested in startup working to bring AI technology to a new physical flesh factor or mayhap , a new OS .
“ I do n’t get laid that the exist form divisor that we have , or the existing operating systems that we have for computer hardware are optimized for [ AI ] , but so we ’re really curious about the space , ” say Oseary .
He mentioned that Sound Ventures had foregather withHumane , the makers of the Ai pin , two years ago , and had invested in Rabbit , the AI computer hardware startup co - plant byJesse Lyu .
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“ The intellect we got really excited about what Jesse was building is because of the Large Action Model component . So we actually appear at the hardware as almost being irrelevant over time — the form factor did n’t issue , ” explain Epstein , speaking about Sound Ventures ’ pastime in the combining of AI and hardware .
“ Maybe today it looks like a dongle that kind of looks like your sound , but tomorrow it seem like something else , and finally it ’s irrelevant , ” she continued . “ But this software system is … watch our preferences and can take natural process on our behalf . And in fact , there ’s a moment in time where a company like that could actually be establish and potentially interrupt a player like Apple , ” Epstein said .
“ It was less of a ironware play for us . We really looked at it as investing in another foundation manikin , ” she added .
The VC firm is also concerned in induct in thenew AI gimmick being built by legendary Apple intriguer Jony I ve , in collaboration with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman .
In fact , Kutcher order that they had “ had a conversation with Jony today , ” though TechCrunch understands a term sheet has not yet been signed .
“ Somebody ’s go to have a breakthrough in this blank space and it ’s going to be really helpful and really profound for all of us , ” tell Kutcher .
