OpenAI alumni launch Zero Shot venture fund

A group of former OpenAI employees has launched Zero Shot, a new venture capital fund. The fund has reached a first close of $20 million toward a potentially $100 million goal. The founding partners include former OpenAI applied engineering head Evan Morikawa, prompt engineer Andrew Mayne, and researcher Shawn Jain. They are joined by venture capitalist Kelly Kovacs, formerly a founding partner at the venture firm 01A, and Brett Rounsaville, the chief executive officer of Interdimensional.

The partners, who have been friends for years, worked together at OpenAI from before the release of ChatGPT through its period of growth. After leaving the company, they frequently consulted for venture capital firms and advised founder friends on emerging artificial intelligence technology. Mayne noted that some of their friends leaving OpenAI were interested in starting companies, which prompted the team to build their own fund to leverage their access to builders and their understanding of where the technology is heading. Morikawa, a founding partner, noted the difficulty of anticipating the trajectory of artificial intelligence, stating, “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.”

Zero Shot has already backed several startups. Its current portfolio includes:

• Worktrace AI: A startup developing artificial intelligence-based management software to help enterprises automate tasks. The company raised a $10 million seed round.
• Foundry Robotics: A startup working on AI-enhanced factory robotics, which recently secured a $13.5 million seed round.

The fund has also invested in a third startup that remains in stealth.

Alongside their active investments, the partners are explicitly avoiding certain artificial intelligence trends. Mayne is skeptical of AI-assisted coding platforms, believing that model developers will quickly make subscriptions to these platforms unnecessary. Meanwhile, Morikawa is skeptical of robotics training data companies, arguing that transferring the physical embodiment gap via video data is currently not possible. Mayne is also skeptical of startups focused on digital twins, concluding that standard LLM models perform just as well.

Why it matters

Zero Shot represents a new wave of operator-led venture capital, where former employees of major artificial intelligence labs leverage their specific technical foresight to filter through the current startup hype cycle.