The investment fund will mostly back founders from the US university.
Andy Konwinski, cofounder of US software company Databricks, has co-launched VC fund Laude Ventures to back spinouts primarily from the University of California, Berkeley, in the US, according to Forbes.
US venture investor Pete Sonsini and Andrew Krioukov, co-founder and CEO at Antimatter, a data security venture, are co-partners of the fund.
All the fund’s cofounders are alumni of the university. It is common in the US for university alumni to fund spinouts from the universities they graduated from.
The partners aim to back 25 companies with this first fund. The team plan to invest at the early-stage — at the moment of discovery — and will help founders turn their research into companies, according to the fund’s website.
The $150m fund includes more than 50 computer scientists as investors, including academic researchers and founders. Aravind Srinivas, cofounder and CEO of Perplexity, a AI-driven search engine and UC Berkeley alum, is an investor.
