Led by 32-year-old Zoe Weinberg and spun out of a public-benefit enterprise group from billionaire Eric Schmidt, ex/ante’s “agentic tech” thesis has discovered backers like Marc Andreessen and the Ford Basis.
For many enterprise capital corporations, topics like disinformation and surveillance, consumer privateness and on-line possession rights are tangential to their startup funding methods. For brand spanking new fund supervisor Zoe Weinberg, they’re every thing.
Her fund, ex/ante, has raised $33 million to give attention to “agentic tech” — a fledgling time period that the fund defines as expertise that pertains to human company and rights within the digital age. Spun out of Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic enterprise arm of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, ex/ante will put money into pre-seed and seed stage startups. And it’s already received the backing of different main business gamers together with Cendana Capital, Marc Andreessen, the Ford Basis and Union Sq. Ventures.
Weinberg, 32, a Brooklyn-based former NGO assist employee and coverage wonk with levels from Harvard, Stanford and Yale, has positioned ex/ante to deal with daunting world points from internet-based threats to democracy to mental property in an period of AI-generated deep fakes.
“How I like to consider it’s, what are the instruments that you would be able to construct that advance a optimistic imaginative and prescient of the world?” she mentioned.
Weinberg’s accomplice within the fund is Michael Mosier, previously the highest lawyer at crypto startups Espresso Programs and Chainalysis and a former official in management roles on the U.S. Treasury and Division of Justice. The duo will look to put in writing $500,000 to $1 million checks, able to co-leading rounds in corporations that can typically fall into extra conventional classes, too, resembling synthetic intelligence, cybersecurity, knowledge infrastructure, digital identification, fintech and web3.
ex/ante has made 9 investments up to now, together with deep-fake detection startup Actuality Defender, client identification firm Lockr and self-custody enterprise Webacy.
“I’ve recognized Zoe since 2018, and from the start our conversations at all times wrestled with this query of how new expertise may meet this second of geopolitical turmoil,” Schmidt wrote Forbes in an announcement. “Know-how for the subsequent period should shield and advance the democratic values. We’re proud to have incubated and supported the launch of ex/ante, a enterprise fund that can pioneer that future and have a profound affect on the world.”
Weinberg was serving as an assist employee in Mosul, Iraq, when she visited one of many nation’s first bitcoin mining operations in a small white constructing close to the Iran border in 2017. Everybody concerned was displaced or a refugee from the Islamic State, or ISIS, that also managed elements of the nation, she mentioned later.
“I bear in mind one of many guys saying, ‘look, ISIS may take over tomorrow, and I may go away the nation and nonetheless have property,’” she recalled. “Abruptly they had been in a position to have a level of economic safety and freedom that simply didn’t exist beforehand.”
That have joined others overseas and home in serving to to kind Weinberg’s worldview. The daughter of oldsters within the artwork world, she volunteered in Senegal as a excessive schooler and gained a number of thesis prizes at Harvard, then labored a stint at Goldman Sachs. She spent two years with the Worldwide Finance Company’s World Financial institution Group, work that took her to Kenya with stops in Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Working within the growing world, Weinberg was struck by how expertise was getting used each to learn and maintain again native residents — some instruments surveilling and controlling, others permitting entry to outdoors info and monetary alternative.
Again within the U.S., Weinberg labored for Hillary Clinton’s presidential marketing campaign in 2016 and racked up extra levels: a JD from Yale, the place she earned a number of fellowships, and an MBA from Stanford, the place she was a Knight-Hennessy scholar. In 2019, she briefly joined Google’s AI crew in a analysis place. It was in her subsequent function, working in coverage on the congressional Nationwide Safety Fee on Synthetic Intelligence in Washington, D.C., that she received to know Schmidt, the work group’s chairman.
By early 2020, she had joined his and his spouse Wendy Schmidt’s public profit enterprise facility, Schmidt Futures, to incubate the concept that would change into ex/ante. The pitch: construct an funding automobile that would speed up expertise, whereas additionally “making democracies extra sturdy and resilient.” (Schmidt, whose web value Forbes values at about $19 billion, just lately raised $600 million for his personal enterprise fund, Innovation Endeavors, per the Enterprise Capital Journal; in October, Forbes reported that Schmidt had dedicated a minimum of $100 million to a startup accelerator with whose CEO he had a romantic relationship.)
Weinberg and ex/ante break up off on their very own final yr, bringing three investments made for the household workplace together with her; Mosier joined in March 2023, a number of months after its formal launch. Focusing on $25 million initially, ex/ante’s restricted accomplice group expanded far past Schmidt Futures, ultimately attracting Andreessen and fellow a16z accomplice Chris Dixon, USV and its founders Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, Cendana and the Ford Basis, in addition to Protocol Labs, the Klarman Household Basis, and Midas Checklist investor Kirsten Inexperienced.
Burnham was so taken by Weinberg and her strategy that he volunteered to take a seat in on ex/ante’s funding committee conferences as an adviser, one thing he solely does for the agency, his personal (the place he’s now stepped again right into a enterprise accomplice function) and one different fund. In Weinberg’s strategy to investing, the veteran investor mentioned he was reminded of his and Wilson’s personal work to determine Union Sq. Ventures right into a preeminent VC agency.
“There’s no query by way of whether or not Zoe and Michael are proper, in my thoughts,” Burnham mentioned. “There’s a query about whether or not they’re early.”
Ex/ante means “earlier than the occasion,” and whether or not the agency is taking a riskier strategy by backing corporations not historically seen as VC fund drivers stays to be seen. Weinberg pointed to established companies outdoors the fund’s portfolio, resembling messaging non-profit Sign, search engine DuckDuckGo, net browser Courageous and decentralized storage community Arweave as examples of corporations centered on privateness and consumer safety which have reached significant scale; others have been acquired by the massive tech corporations, inching them towards being extra aware in such areas, she argued.
Nonetheless, Weinberg mentioned she’s a pragmatist about how such instruments will change into high priorities for giant numbers of customers. “I present up at LaGuardia Airport and all of the sudden Google is aware of it’s time for me to have my boarding cross. It’s a bit of creepy, however it’s additionally handy. I perceive that,” she mentioned. Different applied sciences, resembling knowledge “passports” that would enable customers to willingly promote their private knowledge, or watermarking instruments that might mark possession of digital content material, may result in inequality and misuse, she famous.
It’s exactly such conversations, nevertheless, that make Weinberg unusually invaluable on a cap desk, mentioned Daniel Mason, CEO of Anon, as startup constructing infrastructure for AI brokers to hold out duties throughout totally different providers and apps, resembling posting to a number of social media websites concurrently, or autonomously discovering and reserving a aircraft ticket. In product technique conferences, Weinberg urged Mason to retailer as little consumer knowledge as doable; she’s additionally made introductions to clients and different traders, he added.
“Zoe is really an knowledgeable on knowledge safety, knowledge privateness and identification,” Mason mentioned. “She simply blew me away, each with that and the folks she knew. She’s been a tremendous confidante for us.”
That’s one profit — and calling card — of ex/ante: for mission-driven founders who take its cash, they achieve an “ideological ally,” Weinberg argued. Such coverage positions — professional privateness and civil liberties, digital sovereignty and American-style democracy — ought to win followers throughout the tech sector’s ideological spectrums, the investor hopes.
“In some ways what we’re doing is inherently political,” Weinberg mentioned. “But it surely’s not inherently partisan.”