Geoff Ralston, known for his long-standing startup community at Y Combinator, has returned to the official investment ring, he announced Thursday.
His new fund is called the Safe Artificial Intelligence Fund, or SAIF. This is both an explanation of the paper and a verbal play.
Ralston is specifically looking for startups that “enhance AI safety, security and responsible deployment,” as his fund's website explains. He plans to write a $100,000 check for safety with a $10 million cap and “pun intended.” Of course, a safe is an investment investment tool before the present/price of investments pioneered by the Y-combinator (represents a simple agreement for future fairness).
While most VCs these days are trying to invest in AI startups, Ralston's take focus a little more on the idea of safe AI, despite his acknowledgement of the concept being a bit broad.
“The vast majority of AI projects in today's world use this technology to solve problems, generate efficiency, and create new features. It's not necessarily inherently safe, but safety is not a major concern,” Ralston tells TechCrunch. “I'm going to fund startups whose main purpose is secure AI, as I defined (very broadly).”
This list includes startups that focus on improving AI safety, such as clarifying the AI decision-making process and benchmark AI safety. These include products that protect intellectual property, products that allow AI to meet compliance requirements, fight disinformation, and detect attacks generated by AI. He also wants to invest in functional AI tools that have built-in safety in mind, such as better AI prediction tools and AI-enabled business negotiation tools that don't reveal corporate secrets to outsiders.
This may sound like a list of AI startups that many VCs are pursuing, but there are areas where Ralston says he won't return. One example is a completely autonomous weapon.
“There are certainly applications for AI that are not safe: using technology to create biological weapons, managing traditional weapons that are not human in the loop, etc.” he explained.
In fact, he wants to fund a “weapon safety system” that can detect or prevent attacks from AI weapons.
This is an interesting paradoxical perspective from the founders of today's defense technology and many of the VCS. As TechCrunch previously reported, some of the people who build AI weapons have increasingly come to the idea that such weapons will work better without humans.
Still, all AI is a busy area of VCS recently. That's where Ralston hopes his YC connection gives him an advantage. Ralston left YC in 2022. This started out as President (held by Garry Tan) for three years and as an advisor for over ten years.
Ralston plans to provide the kind of mentoring he did with the renowned startup accelerator and has committed to mentoring them through how to apply to YC. And he offers to help them leverage his considerable investor network.
Ralston refused to say how big the fund is, how many startups he supports, or who his LP supporter is.