Full-Time
Chief Executive Officer - Project Connect
Multiple Teams
Posted on 4/29/2025
AI Fund
11-50 employees
Venture studio launching AI-based startups
No salary listed
Remote in USA
Remote
 Business & Strategy (2) |
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- Demonstrated leadership at an early-stage B2B SaaS company (0 to 1 and beyond)
- Proven ability to scale sales and business development, especially in industrial or technical services
- Experience working with AI or data-centric products, ideally involving enterprise knowledge systems or voice/LLM interfaces
- Successful fundraising experience, with clear examples of translating vision into investor excitement
- A product sensibility and empathy for users in the field—particularly those who depend on tools, not desks, to do their jobs
- Ability to move fast with clarity and conviction, operating in environments with ambiguity and change
- Lead the company across all functional areas—strategy, go-to-market, operations, finance, and team building
- Drive the vision and execution for a new category-defining product that combines synthetic prep workflows, voice-based support, and optional human escalation
- Own and execute founder-led sales, with a focus on landing and expanding large enterprise accounts in field service-heavy industries
- Leverage the deep well of technical content and service data to jumpstart product development of proprietary LLM-based products
- Secure and negotiate key partnerships to expand use cases, distribution, and data access
- Hire and manage a world-class team across GTM, product, and technical functions
- Build the investor pipeline and prepare the company for its next stage of financing
- Familiarity with the field service management space
- Experience integrating or commercializing LLM-based products
- Experience working with or acquiring legacy product/data assets
AI Fund is a venture studio that creates and launches AI-based companies. It partners with innovators and tech pioneers to develop startups that apply artificial intelligence to solve problems in fields such as manufacturing, mental health, maritime shipping, and education. It acts as a minor co-founder, offering resources, strategic guidance, and investment to help entrepreneurs move ideas from concept to reality quickly. Unlike traditional funds, it builds companies around AI-enabled business models and shares equity stakes in the ventures it helps create and grow. Its goal is to advance practical AI applications and drive meaningful impact by helping early-stage startups scale and succeed.
Company Size
11-50
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
$425.3M
Headquarters
Palo Alto, California
Founded
2017
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Led $2.8M IrisGo.AI seed; Acer pre-loads software globally.
- Portfolio spans maritime, mental health, education via AI applications.
- IrisGo.AI targets 1M daily users, $2M ARR by end-2026.
What critics are saying
- AI.FUND diverts European AI founders from AI Fund deal flow.
- Menlo's $100M Anthology Fund poaches talent with Anthropic access.
- IrisGo.AI Series A by June 2026 dilutes AI Fund's stake.
What makes AI Fund unique
- AI Fund acts as minor co-founder in venture studio model.
- Andrew Ng founded AI Fund with $370M backing from Sequoia, NEA.
- Founder in Residence program validates ideas rapidly with domain CEOs.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Wellness Program
Professional Development Budget
Paid Vacation
401(k) Company Match
Remote Work Options
Company News
Profitmind, today announced a $9 million Series A financing led by Accenture Ventures.
BizTrip AI has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding, bringing its total raised to $2.5 million. The round was led by RRE Ventures, with participation from AI Fund, BAG Collective, BAG Ventures and Correlation Ventures. Sabre also participated, having announced an investment and partnership with BizTrip AI in January to develop AI corporate travel assistants. The startup, recognised as a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2026, will use the funds for product development, engineering hiring and customer growth initiatives. BizTrip AI is building AI capabilities designed to reduce friction for business travellers whilst delivering cost savings and improved compliance for organisations in what CEO Tom Romary describes as "one of the most complex and inefficient operational categories for modern companies.
IrisGo.AI, a startup developing AI personal computer software, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding led by AI Fund, the venture studio founded by AI pioneer Andrew Ng. The Taiwanese company has secured Acer as its first OEM partner, with its software to be pre-loaded on devices. IrisGo.AI differentiates itself through a "contextual awareness engine" featuring persistent memory that learns user preferences, hybrid computing using local NPUs for privacy-sensitive tasks, and tool orchestration across existing applications. Its "Watch and Learn" feature allows users to demonstrate tasks once, which the AI then automates whilst keeping data processing local. The funding will accelerate IrisGo.AI's market expansion as the AI PC market is projected to exceed 100 million units annually. The startup plans to announce partnerships with two additional PC manufacturers in late 2026.
AI butler IrisGo nets $2.8m, eyes series A after CES buzz. IrisGo, a US startup building a "digital butler" for PC users, has closed a US$2.8 million seed round led by Andrew Ng's AI Fund, the startup confirmed to Tech in Asia last week. The company is valued at US$21 million. Jeffrey Lai, IrisGo's co-founder and CEO, says he's already in talks with new investors for a potential series A round of around US$20 million. The company hasn't set any specific timeline for the series A, though it expects June "to be a good candidate." The startup will use the funds for product development. It recently hired four new engineers, though Lai emphasizes that he wants the team to stay lean due to the heavy involvement of AI coding tools such as Claude Code. Lai and his team demoed IrisGo's desktop butler app at CES in Las Vegas earlier this month, showing off features such as screen recording as well as mouse and keyboard controlling. The app ran on laptops built by Acer, a launch partner for IrisGo. "We're getting a lot of traction after CES. What we did there proved that we're able to attract new investors for a potential series A round," Lai tells Tech in Asia. Acer devices with IrisGo's app preinstalled are scheduled to ship globally by the end of this month. Three more launch partners are expected to come in the following months, Lai adds, though he declined to disclose names. IrisGo also plans to make the app available to download publicly for any devices running Intel's AI-focused Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) and similar processors. Having the app preinstalled could help IrisGo reach users at scale with minimum expenses, says Lai, noting that the startup did not pay to have its AI butler installed on its partners' computers. Any revenue will come from user subscriptions. IrisGo plans to offer both free and premium tiers, the latter at US$20 per month. The startup expects to have 1 million daily active users by the end of 2026 through Acer's ecosystem. Taking into account a 10% conversion rate, this would generate around US$2 million in annual recurring revenue, Lai estimates. IrisGo vs. Copilot? Most laptop makers are aggressively promoting devices with Microsoft's Copilot built in. This means users will have access to multiple AI assistants preinstalled on new laptops. Lai isn't concerned about users choosing one over the other, as he believes Copilot and IrisGo serve different purposes.
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