Ashton Kutcher is leaving Sound Ventures, the company he co-founded with Guy Oseary 11 years ago, to launch a separate VC fund, The Wall Street Journal reported. The actor and investor's new company will be co-founded with Morgan Beller, who was most recently a general partner at seed-focused venture capital NFX and previously co-led cryptocurrency project Libra at Meta. Mr. Beller also spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
TechCrunch has separately heard that Kutcher is preparing to retire. The WSJ report confirms that and adds new details about the plan with Mr. Beller. The name of the new company has not yet been announced.
Kutcher's departure doesn't seem to be a sign of trouble at Sound Ventures. Investors often walk away from underperforming companies, but that's not the case here. The company, which has backed companies like Brex and Gusto, was also an early investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li's World Labs.
This split is also notable for its hints at where AI money may be headed next. While Sound built its reputation on focused, high-conviction bets on category-leading AI labs, Kutcher's new fund appears to be going after the underbelly of those companies: the infrastructure and energy that power them.
“He and his funds have been consistently successful. [my] Ranking of top unicorn investors. That's an interesting case! ” Ilya Streblaev, a finance professor at Stanford University who tracks top-performing VCs, writes of X:
The actor has known OpenAI's Sam Altman since Altman founded Loopt, years before launching the ChatGPT maker.
Kutcher's departure was due in part to disagreements over which stage of startups to invest in, with Sound leaning toward backing established companies rather than betting on very early-stage startups, according to the Journal.
Mr. Kutcher and Mr. Beller focus on early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, energy, and deep technology startups—startups built around hard science and engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone.
Despite leaving Sound Ventures, Kutcher will continue to serve as an advisor to the company. Meanwhile, Oseary and Sound general partner Effie Epstein will advise Kutcher and Beller's new company.
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