CA-based Zetta Venture Partners Raises $180 Million to Aid AI-first Companies

Artificial intelligence has embraced the responsibility to enable the firms to tackle the challenges raised by COVID-19 pandemic, directly fighting the disease with new treatments and helping businesses to operate while people shelter in place

Fremont, CA: Zetta Venture Partners, a San Francisco, CA-based firm exclusively focused on AI, raised $180 million to invest in more AI-first companies. Zetta's third fund brings the firm's total assets raised to date to $365 million.

Zetta is normally the first investor in a startup, committing a decent sum of money when the company has some predictive models to get its first customers. "We help companies solve the specific challenges of building an AI-first company, such as gathering data, building machine learning teams, and marketing the value of predictive systems," said Ash Fontana, managing director of Zetta Venture Partners.

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Artificial intelligence has embraced the responsibility to enable the firms to tackle the challenges raised by COVID-19 pandemic, directly fighting the disease with new treatments and helping businesses to operate while people shelter in place. Zetta company Domino Data Lab is assisting pharmaceutical companies to power their data science teams seeking vaccines, while Myia is helping physicians remotely monitor patients, and Invenia is keeping the electrical grid stable. Meanwhile, Zetta pioneers such as FollowAnalytics, Tractable, Constructor, and Lilt are all helping businesses move their operations online, and companies such as Opsani are assisting businesses to manage the skyrocketing infrastructure costs that come with that shift.

"So many people are feeling pessimistic about the future right now," said Jocelyn Goldfein, managing director at Zetta. "Those concerns should motivate us to work harder to invent new solutions and build resilience into our systems, whether that's health care, disaster response, environmental protection, or economic safety nets. These problems look like opportunities to great entrepreneurs, and we are grateful to have the chance to provide the earliest support to the founders who are rising to the challenge with innovative ideas."

Founded in 2013 –Zetta Venture Partners leads investment rounds in pre-traction, AI-first companies with B2B business models. "AI has largely been about augmenting and automating human labor," said Mark Gorenberg, founder and managing director of Zetta Venture Partners. "But the next wave of AI is about creating and understanding complex systems such as the environment, human biology, cybersecurity, and the global economy."

"We decided to team with Zetta because of their unique expertise navigating the challenges of bringing AI to market," said Ross Schibler, founder and CEO of Opsani. "The team at Zetta is insightful, motivated, well-connected, and well-respected. They look at things from the entrepreneur's perspective. Zetta is a superb partner in building a great technology company."

"As an AI-focused fund, Zetta understood our business and community at a deep level," said Anthony Goldbloom, co-founder and CEO of Kaggle. "They helped us navigate big decisions ranging from building the business and raising capital through to our acquisition by Google."

See also: Top Artificial Intelligence Companies

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