- Zetta Venture Partners announced a new $180 million fund to invest in AI-first companies
Zetta Venture Partners announced a new $180 million fund to invest in AI-first companies. This fund will build on the success of its previous two funds. And with this third fund, it brings the firm’s total assets under management to $365 million. The firm was founded in 2013 — which is the first year a zettabyte of data went across the internet.
Artificial intelligence has been making major contributions in the COVID-19 crisis, directly tackling the disease with new treatments and enabling businesses to operate while people shelter in place. For example, Zetta company Domino Data Lab is helping pharmaceutical companies power their data science teams seeking vaccines and Invenia is keeping the electrical grid stable. Plus Myia is helping physicians remotely monitor patients.
Zetta Venture Partners led by three managing directors: Mark Gorenberg, Ash Fontana and Jocelyn Goldfein. All of them have been entrepreneurs and operators as well as investors. So far, Zetta has backed 36 companies, including Kaggle, Domo, Clearbit, Domino Data Lab, Tractable, and Invenia.
Key Quotes:
“AI has largely been about augmenting and automating human labor. But the next wave of AI is about creating and understanding complex systems such as the environment, human biology, cybersecurity and the global economy.”
-Mark Gorenberg, founder and managing director of Zetta Venture Partners
“So many people are feeling pessimistic about the future right now. Those concerns should motivate us to work harder to invent new solutions and build resilience into our systems, whether that’s health care, disaster response, environmental protection or economic safety nets. These problems look like opportunities to great entrepreneurs, and we are grateful to have the chance to provide the earliest support to the founders who are rising to the challenge with innovative ideas.”
-Jocelyn Goldfein, managing director at Zetta
“We help companies solve the specific challenges of building an AI-first company, such as gathering data, building machine learning teams and marketing the value of predictive systems.”
-Ash Fontana, managing director of Zetta Venture Partners
“We decided to team with Zetta because of their unique expertise navigating the challenges of bringing AI to market. The team at Zetta is insightful, motivated, well-connected and well-respected. They look at things from the entrepreneur’s perspective. Zetta is a superb partner in building a great technology company.”
-Ross Schibler, founder and CEO of Opsani
“As an AI-focused fund, Zetta understood our business and community at a deep level. They helped us navigate big decisions ranging from building the business and raising capital through to our acquisition by Google.”
-Anthony Goldbloom, co-founder and CEO of Kaggle
