Ashton Kutcher leaving Sound Ventures to launch new VC firm with Morgan Beller | TechCrunch

Ashton Kutcher is stepping away from Sound Ventures — the firm he co-founded with Guy Oseary 11 years ago — to start a separate VC fund, the Wall Street Journal reported. The actor and investor’s new firm is being co-founded with Morgan Beller, who until recently was a general partner at seed-focused VC outfit NFX and previously co-led cryptocurrency project Libra at Meta. Beller also spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.TechCrunch had separately heard that Kutcher was preparing to leave; the WSJ’s report confirms it and adds new detail on his plans with Beller. The name of the new firm hasn’t been made public yet. Kutcher’s exit doesn’t appear to be a sign of trouble at Sound Ventures — investors often leave firms that are underperforming, but that’s not the case here. The firm, which has backed companies like Brex and Gusto, was also an early investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs.The split is also notable for what it signals about where AI money is heading next: Sound built its reputation on concentrated, high-conviction bets in category-leading AI labs, while Kutcher’s new fund appears to be chasing the layer underneath those companies — the infrastructure and energy that power them.“He and his fund consistently make it onto [my] rankings of top unicorn investors. An interesting case!” Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev, who tracks top-performing VCs, wrote on X.The actor has known OpenAI’s Sam Altman since Altman founded Loopt — years before the launch of the ChatGPT maker.Kutcher’s departure was partly due to different views on which startup stages to target for investments, with Sound leaning toward backing companies that are already more established, rather than betting on very early-stage startups, according to WSJ.Kutcher and Beller are focused on making early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech startups — startups built around hard science and engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone.Despite leaving Sound Ventures, Kutcher will continue to serve as an adviser to the firm. Meanwhile, Oseary and Sound general partner Effie Epstein will advise Kutcher and Beller’s new firm.TopicsWhen you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Reporter, Venture Marina Temkin is a venture capital and startups reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she wrote about VC for PitchBook and Venture Capital Journal. Earlier in her career, Marina was a financial analyst and earned a CFA charterholder designation.You can contact or verify outreach from Marina by emailing marina.temkin@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 347-683-3909 on Signal. Last chance to save up to $190 on TechCrunch Founder Summit. Join 1,000+ founders and VCs at all stages for real-world scaling insights and connections that move the needle.

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