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Ashton Kutcher is stepping away from Sound Ventures \u2014 the firm he co-founded with Guy Oseary 11 years ago \u2014 to start a separate VC fund, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a>. The actor and investor\u2019s new firm is being co-founded with Morgan Beller, who until recently was a general partner at seed-focused VC outfit NFX and previously co-led cryptocurrency project Libra at Meta. Beller also spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.<\/p>\n TechCrunch had separately heard that Kutcher was preparing to leave; the WSJ\u2019s report confirms it and adds new detail on his plans with Beller. The name of the new firm hasn\u2019t been made public yet. <\/p>\n Kutcher\u2019s exit doesn\u2019t appear to be a sign of trouble at Sound Ventures \u2014 investors often leave firms that are underperforming, but that\u2019s not the case here. The firm, which has backed companies like Brex and Gusto, was also an early investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li\u2019s World Labs.<\/p>\n The split is also notable for what it signals about where AI money is heading next: Sound built its reputation on concentrated, high-conviction bets in category-leading AI labs, while Kutcher\u2019s new fund appears to be chasing the layer underneath those companies \u2014 the infrastructure and energy that power them.<\/p>\n \u201cHe and his fund consistently make it onto [my] rankings of top unicorn investors. An interesting case!\u201d Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev, who tracks top-performing VCs, wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n The actor has known OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman<\/a> since Altman founded Loopt \u2014 years before the launch of the ChatGPT maker.<\/p>\n Kutcher\u2019s departure was partly due to different views on which startup stages to target for investments, with Sound leaning toward backing companies that are already more established, rather than betting on very early-stage startups, according to WSJ.<\/p>\n Kutcher and Beller are focused on making early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech startups \u2014 startups built around hard science and engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone.<\/p>\n Despite leaving Sound Ventures, Kutcher will continue to serve as an adviser to the firm. Meanwhile, Oseary and Sound general partner Effie Epstein will advise Kutcher and Beller\u2019s new firm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n