Ian Hathaway, partner at OpenAI Startup Fund, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.

Ian Hathaway leads the investment fund of US AI research organisation OpenAI, the maker of generative AI large language model ChatGPT. Hathaway took over the reins of the fund in 2024, after Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, stepped down from running the corporate VC fund. Hathaway has been at the fund since it was launched in 2021.
The $175m OpenAI Startup Fund invests in early-stage AI startups where it believes AI can have a transformative effect, such as in healthcare, law, education and energy and infrastructure.
The fund’s investors include Microsoft and other OpenAI partners, although OpenAI itself is not an investor. OpenAI calls itself a capped-profit company and is governed by the OpenAI Nonprofit. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI and is the company’s main commercial partner.
The OpenAI Startup Fund invests in a small number of startups. Its first four investments made in 2022 were in video-editing software Descript, generative AI large language model for the legal sector Harvey, self-organising workspace Mem and foreign language tutor Speak.
More recent investments include: XY Miners, a UK blockchain and high-performance computing provider, which raised $300m in April this year; Kick, a US accounting and bookkeeping automation platform, which raised $9m in a seed round last October; and Unify, a outbound marketing optimisation platform, which raised $12m in a series A also last October.
One of OpenAI’s most recent investments marked its first foray into the cybersecurity sector. In April this year it co-led a $43m round in Adaptive, a security training startup that aims to prevent deepfake personas and generative AI social engineering attacks. Hathaway has also overseen OpenAI’s accelerator programme, Converge, which initially launched in December 2022.
Before joining OpenAI, Hathaway was an investor at Haystack, a San Francisco-based seed-stage VC firm, which made early investments in companies such as delivery apps Instacart and Doordash, as well as cloud infrastructure company Hasicorp, petcare service provider Wag and equity management platform Carta.

The Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry.
These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession.