OpenAI Startup Fund Raises $15 Million Quietly

The OpenAI Startup Fund, a venture fund that is connected to OpenAI but not the same as it, has quietly closed a $15 million tranche. The fund invests in early-stage companies in education, law, and the sciences that use AI.

A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says that the $15 million in new cash came from two investors who were not named on or around April 19. On April 25, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission received the paperwork naming Ian Hathaway as the manager and sole partner of the OpenAI Startup Fund.

For legal reasons, we sent money to OpenAI Startup Fund SPV II, L.P., a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that is a part of the OpenAI Startup Fund.

An SPV allows multiple investors to pool their money and put it into one company or fund. VCs occasionally invest in startups that do not align with the fund’s strategy or adhere to its rules. Investors other than banks or other institutions can also purchase SPVs.

This is the second time that the OpenAI Startup Fund has raised money through an SPV. In February, the OpenAI Startup Fund raised $10 million for the first time.

The OpenAI Startup Fund has companies like Harvey, Ambiance Healthcare, and Figure AI that work on humanoid robots. Last year, it emerged that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had long held legal control over the fund. Altman raised money for the OpenAI Startup Fund from outside limited partners, such as Microsoft (a close OpenAI partner and investor), and had the final say on the fund’s investments. They advertised the fund as a typical corporate venture arm.

There was no money involved in the OpenAI Startup Fund, and there still isn’t. However, some people said Altman’s ownership created a conflict of interest. OpenAI stated that they only intended the general partner structure to be “temporary.”

In April, Altman officially gave Hathaway control of the OpenAI Startup Fund. Hathaway had been a key investor in the fund since 2021, and he had previously worked as an investor with the venture capital firm Haystack.

Last year, the OpenAI Startup Fund had $175 million in commitments and $325 million in gross net assets. Converge, an incubator programme, was one of its projects. It has backed more than a dozen startups, such as the language learning app Speak, the AI-powered note-taking app Mem, the collaborative multimedia editing platform Descript, which was worth $553 million last year, and the IDE platform Anysphere.

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Kiera Collins

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