Zero Shot debuts with $20M and a $100M target
Zero Shot, a newly formed venture capital fund led largely by former OpenAI alumni, has raised a first close of $20 million and has already started deploying capital. The firm is aiming to build a $100 million fund, backed initially by institutions and family offices.
The fund’s name references “zero-shot” learning, an AI training approach in which a model performs tasks it has not explicitly seen before—an idea the team says reflects its appetite for emerging categories, including what it describes as “vibe coding.”
Founding team includes former OpenAI leaders
Three of the five founding partners previously worked at OpenAI. They include Evan Morikawa, who led applied engineering efforts across DALL·E, Codex, and ChatGPT and now works at Generalist; Andrew Mayne, described as OpenAI’s first prompt engineer and host of The OpenAI Podcast, who also founded the AI consultancy Interdimensional; and Shawn Jain, a former OpenAI researcher and venture capitalist who later founded Synthefy.
The other founding partners are Kelly Kovacs of 01A and Brett Rounsaville, who previously worked at Twitter and Disney and is now CEO of Interdimensional.
Early portfolio: Worktrace AI, Foundry Robotics, and a stealth startup
Zero Shot said it has invested in three companies so far, including Worktrace AI and Foundry Robotics, which builds AI-enabled factory robots and recently raised $13.5 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures. The fund’s third investment remains in stealth.
Advisors bring operations and communications experience
Advisors include Diane Yoon, former head of people at OpenAI; Steve Dowling, who led communications at OpenAI and Apple; and Luke Miller, a former product leader at OpenAI.
Related
