Google is a prolific investor. You may not hear about it, but Google keeps investing in all sorts of companies from time to time. Along the same, the company is being said to have launched a new venture capital program led by Alphabet’s VP of engineering Anna Patterson.
Apparently, instead of your regular investors, this particular VC firm will have a bunch of Alphabet engineers, who will be part of the new fund on a rotational basis. Investments made through this fund will focus upon Artificial Intelligence.
A fund dedicated to AI and independent from Google Ventures sounds surprising, but isn’t really. The company has time and again talked of a future that has AI at its center. Considering this, it only stands to reason that Google would want to keep a tab on the developments in AI. And what better way to get cutting edge companies come to you, than creating a fund for them. This way, Google can also acquire stakes in the most promising of these firms.
Google’s Interest in AI goes way, way back of course, Of late, that interest has sen the company focus upon innovations like the Tensor units. Indeed, the company even announced that it was making a full stack of Tensor processing units free for researchers to use.
The new fund will invest anywhere between $1 million to $1- million into these startups, although what isn’t known, is the amount that the VC fund is getting to start off with.
