Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures Closed a $240M Fund To Invest In Generative AI

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures Closed a $240M Fund To Invest In Generative AI
Sound Ventures

On Monday, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures announced the firm closed an oversubscribed $240 million AI fund and will invest $35 million to $50 million into each company it selects.

As previously reported by dot.LA, this AI fund comes two years after the close of Sound’s third fund. The Beverly Hills-based firm was founded in 2015 by Kutcher and former talent scout Guy Oseary. The former Marsh head of strategy and planning Effie Epstein joined as a General Partner in 2017.


“Sound’s AI fund will invest in foundation model layer businesses, including large language models as well as stable diffusion models,” Epstein told dot.LA. “Since one of the biggest bottlenecks to building foundation models is access to technical talent, we will focus on businesses with exceptional technical talent at the helm, as well as access to cloud and compute.”

While Epstein was unable to share which companies they have set their eyes on for this fund, Sound’s portfolio already includes artificial intelligence companies OpenAI, Anthropic and StabilityAI.

“We believe that the current capabilities in AI are representative of a platform shift that will be pervasive across sectors and geographies,” she said. “We are proud to partner with leaders in this space and be in the conversation to responsibly shape the future of this technology.”

The firm currently manages over $1 billion in assets across all of its funds. Prior investments include rental platform Airbnb, rideshare app Uber, digital payments solution Affirm and automation workflow tool Forethought among others.

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LA Tech Week: How Local Climate Investors Assess and Vet Green Startups

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

LA Tech Week: How Local Climate Investors Assess and Vet Green Startups
Samson Amore

In a region known for being a national trailblazer when it comes to climate policies, there’s no shortage of green energy startups in L.A. looking for funding. There’s also a plethora of investors and incubators, which means founders looking for cash flow should be extra specific about their value proposition when they pitch to cut through the noise. At least that was the message coming from the panelists at the UCLA Anderson School of Management on Tuesday.

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LA Tech Week Day Two: Social Highlights
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L.A. Tech Week has brought venture capitalists, founders and entrepreneurs from around the world to the California coast. With so many tech nerds in one place, it's easy to laugh, joke and reminisce about the future of tech in SoCal.

Here's what people are saying about day two of L.A. Tech Week on social:

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LA Tech Week: Goldhirsh Foundation and the Positive Effects of Technology

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech Week: Goldhirsh Foundation and the Positive Effects of Technology
Photo taken by Decerry Donato

On Monday, Los Angeles-based philanthropic organization Goldhirsh Foundation hosted the Technology and Storytelling For Social Good panel at Creative Visions studio to kick off LA Tech week.

Tara Roth, president of the foundation, moderated the panel and gathered nonprofit and tech leaders including Paul Lanctot, web developer of The Debt Collective; Alexis Cabrera, executive director of 9 Dots; Sabra Williams, co-founder of Creative Acts; and Laura Gonzalez, senior program manager of Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI).

Each of the panelists are grantees of Goldhirsh Foundation’s LA2050, an initiative launched in 2011 that is continuously trying to drive and track progress toward a shared vision for the future of Los Angeles. Goldhirsh’s vision is to make Los Angeles better for all and in order to achieve their goal, the foundation makes investments into organizations, creates partnerships and utilizes social capital through community events.

The panelists shared how the work they are doing in each of their respective sectors uses technology to solve some of society's most pressing challenges and highlight the importance of tech literacy across every community.

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