OpenAI is not only a pioneer in AI technology, it is also flexing its muscles as an investor in other AI startups. In May 2021, OpenAI launched a $100 million fund backed by Microsoft and other investors, and has invested in at least 16 companies (source: The Information) .
Late last year, OpenAI launched its startup accelerator. In addition to providing funding, OpenAI offers special incentives to startup founders who use its large language models.
If you want to know which companies OpenAI has invested in, what fields they come from, and the background of the founders, please continue reading!
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The investment team of ZhenFund sorted out the 12 companies invested by OpenAI and found some interesting insights:
- Young geniuses and serial entrepreneurs of technology are the key words of the founders of these companies: some of them are a combination of young geniuses, such as Arvid Lunnemark and Sualeh Asif of Anysphere, who just graduated from college last year; some are young geniuses + technology serial entrepreneurs, Jim Keller and Sam Zeloof of Atomic Semi; technology-oriented serial entrepreneurs, like Andrew Mason of Descript, who was the founder of Groupon.
- Many individual investors are highly prolific content creators : In addition to professional investment institutions, at least 7 companies have accepted funds from individual investors, many of whom are content creators themselves, such as Todd Goldberg , Lachy Groom invested in three of them, and they are high-frequency exporters of social platforms.
Anysphere - AI Tools
Website: https://anysphere.co/
The company will open in New York in 2022Founded by Farrow, a developer of AI tools designed to help professionals work efficiently. The company is still operating in stealth mode for now.
Founding Team: Arvid Lunnemark & Sualeh Asif"Genius Combination of Classmates born after 2000 "
Arvid Lunnemark, Class of 2022, MIT Mathematics and Computer Science; Sualeh Asif , Class of 2022, MIT Mathematics and Computer Science.
The company will complete a $200,000 seed round of financing in 2022, with Alameda Research as the investor.
Atomic Semi - Chip Manufacturing
Founded in Dover in 2023, the company mainly uses 3D projection printing technology to manufacture advanced and simplified semiconductor silicon chips. To provide users with simple and miniaturized chips by using radically simplified and downsized semiconductor fabs and prototype integrated circuits.
Founding Team: Jim Keller & Sam Zeloof "Technologist + Young Genius Combination"
Jim Keller graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in electrical engineering. He is a famous chip architect and CEO of AI chip company Tenstorrent. He has worked for Intel, AMD, Apple and Tesla; Sam Zeloof "content creator", graduated from Carnegie Mellon University He became famous on the Internet by successfully creating a 1200-transistor chip in his own garage.
The company will complete a $15 million seed round of financing in 2023, with investors including OpenAI Startup Fund, Fred Ehrsam, Nat Friedman, and Naval Ravikant.
Cursor - code editor
Website: https://www.cursor.so
Founded in San Francisco in 2023, the company develops IDEs built from the ground up using LLM.
Founding Team: Aman Sanger & Michael Truell " High School and College Classmates/Little Genius Combination"
Aman Sanger , MIT Mathematics and Computer Science, 2022, co-founder of Abelian AI; Michael Truell , MIT Mathematics and Computer Science, 2022.
Diagram - Design Tool
Website: https://diagram.com
Founded in 2022 in Brooklyn, New York, the company develops product design tools. The company's tools, powered by artificial intelligence, help users automate tasks.
Founder Jordan Singer , "a content creator invested by content creators" , graduated from the University of Arizona with a major in computer science in 2017 and worked as a product designer at Square.
The company will complete a $3 million seed round of financing in 2022. Investors include Figma, Base Case Capital, Basis Set Capital, Lachy Groom, Offline Ventures, Weekend Fund, Shrug Capital, Otherwise Fund, m]x[v Capital, Not Boring Capital, founders and operators from Meta, Block, Replit, Vercel, Stripe, GitHub, Party Round, DoNotPay, Segment, Front, Carbon Health, Universe, Ease, Density, Gumroad, Lattice, Polywork, Primer, Stark, Italic, Compound, Opal, Lolli, and Arrows; an additional $1.1 million is speculated to have come from OpenAI.
Harvey - Legal Assistant
Website: https://www.harvey.ai
Founded in Los Angeles in 2022, the company develops AI SaaS applications for legal practice. The company's apps act as AI assistants changing the way the legal system works , giving lawyers the tools they need to thrive in this evolution.
Founding team: Gabriel Pereyra "Technical serial entrepreneur" graduated from the University of Southern California with a major in computer science, former Meta machine learning engineer, founder of Stealth Startup; Winston Weinberg, graduated from the University of Southern California with a major in law in 2021, former O'Melveny & Myers Law Firm Securities and Antitrust Litigation Attorney.
The company will complete a US$5 million seed round of financing in 2022. Investors include OpenAI Startup Fund, and individual investors include Elad Gil, Jeff Dean, and Sarah Guo.
Kick - Accounting Software
Website: https://kick.co
Founded in Palo Alto in 2021, the company develops a social banking platform designed to crowdsource tax deductions and cash back. The company's platform helps launch online businesses through modern business bank accounts, cashback and authentic affiliate links, helping online creators turn their fees into income.
Founder Conrad Wadowski graduated from Arizona State University with a major in finance, co-founder of Teachable (the company will be acquired by Hotmart for $250 million in 2022).
The company completed the seed round of financing in 2021. Investors include Bossanova, Coughdrop, Davidovs, Uncommon, and individual investors include Hugo Amsellem (Jellysmack VP Community), Youcef. Es-skouri (Dropbox Product Director).
Milo - Virtual Assistant for the Home
Website: https://www.joinmilo.com
Founded in Los Angeles in 2023, the company develops an AI family butler aimed at providing parents with the latest in software and artificial intelligence as an expert in running the home (aka: another parent).
Founder Avni Patel Thompson "Technical serial entrepreneur/Content Creator" graduated from the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School, former Adidas Reebok strategic director, founder of Poppy, co-founder of papaya+post.
qqbot.dev - programming development tool
Website: https://qqbot.dev
Founded in Cerebral Valley in 2023, the company mainly develops a variant of ChatGPT that lives in the IDE. Founder Dan Robinson " Technical serial entrepreneur" graduated from Stanford University with a major in computer science and mathematics, and was a former Heap CTO.
Mem Labs - Note App
Website: https://get.mem.ai/
Founded in Los Altos Hills in 2019, the company develops productivity platforms that simplify task and note-taking workflows. The company's platform allows users to quickly capture and share information through its AI-powered self-organizing workspace, and makes knowledge storage, sharing and generation simple and intuitive, enabling users to stay organized and increase their productivity.
Founding Team: Dennis Xu & Kevin Moody "College Classmates/Technical serial entrepreneur Combination"
Dennis Xu graduated from Stanford University with a major in computer science and was a former Yelp product manager; Kevin Moody graduated from Stanford University with a major in computer science and was a former Google product manager and the founder of Seholo.
The company completed the Pre-seed round of financing in 2019, with investors including Floodgate and Unusual; in 2021, it will complete a $5.6 million seed round of financing, with investors including a16z, Floodgate, Unusual, Shrug, Dreamers, The Todd & Rahul Angel Fund, Julia Lipton , a16z Cultural Leadership Fund, individual investors include Todd Goldberg, Rahul Vohra; A1 round of financing will be completed in 2022, investors include Material V, Firestreak; $23.5 million A2 round of financing will be completed in 2022, investors are OpenAI Startup Fund.
Speak - Language Tutor
Website: https://www.usespeak.com/
Founded in San Francisco in 2016, the company develops language-learning mobile apps designed to help people learn English. The company's app uses speech recognition technology so that people can speak English by having a conversation with real-world scenarios, enabling customers to recognize English words with a strong accent and learn to speak in an easy way.
Founding team: Connor Zwick "Technical serial entrepreneur" graduated from Harvard University, former coco controller CEO, founder of Flashcards+; Andrew Hsu, graduated from Washington University and Stanford University.
The company's financing completed the seed round of financing in 2017, with YC, Khosla, Investo, and Justin Mateen as investors; $11 million in Series A financing in 2020, with Justin Mateen and JAM as investors; $27 million in Series B financing in 2022, Investors include OpenAI Startup Fund, Founders Fund, and individual investors include Josh Buckley, Justin Mateen, Lachy Groom, and Gokul Rajaram.
Descript - Audio and video editing application
Website: https://www.descript.com/
Founded in San Francisco in 2017, the company develops a collaborative audio/video editor designed to transcribe audio into text documents for editing. The company's platform provides an engine that lets users edit audio by editing text, rather than waveforms like they would with a word processor, enabling creators to remove the tedious work that often stands between an idea and its expression.
Founder Andrew Mason "Technology to the serial entrepreneur Driver" graduated from Northwestern University, the founder of the US group buying website Groupon, and the co-founder of Detour.
The company completed a $5 million seed round of financing in 2017, with investors from a16z; completed a $15 million A round of financing in 2019, with investors including a16z and Redpoint; completed a $30 million B round of financing in 2021, with investors including Spark, Redpoint , individual investors include Devdatta Akhawe, Alex Blumberg, Jack Conte, Justine Ezarik, Todd Goldberg, Jean-Denis Greze, John Lilly, Tobi Lutke, Bharat Mediratta, Shishir Mehrotra, Casey Neistat, Brian Pokorny, Raghavendra Prabhu, Lenny Rachitsky, Naval Ravikant, Jay Simons, Jake Shapiro, Rahul Vohra, and Ev Williams; $50 million in Series C financing will be completed in 2022, investors include OpenAI, a16z, Spark, Redpoint, and individual investors include Daniel Gross.
EdgeDB - Open Source Database
Website: https://www.edgedb.com/
Founded in San Francisco in 2019, the company develops an open-source object-relational database designed to address impedance mismatches by returning structured result objects. The company's platform builds queries, subqueries, and nested inserts that are fully composable with syntax to express selection sets, ranges, structures, and attribute assignments, enabling developers to easily build safe and efficient software.
Founding Team: Yury Selivanov & Elvis Pranskevichus "Technical serial entrepreneurs Combination"
Yury Selivanov graduated from Bauman Moscow State Technical University with a major in computer science, co-founder and CEO of MagicStack; Elvis Pranskevichus graduated with a major in computer science from Donetsk Polytechnic University, co-founder and CTO of MagicStack.
The company will complete the seed round of financing in 2019, investors include Pear VC, SV Angel; complete the seed round financing of 4 million US dollars in 2022, investors include Accel, Greg Brockman; complete the A round of financing of 15 million US dollars in 2022, investors include Nava , Accel, Vercel, OpenAI, Netlify, ICONIQ, IBM, Github, Firebase.
The above is from public information retrieval. If there is any error in the content, everyone is welcome to correct it.