Nik Storonsky, the co-founder of UK banking fintech Revolut, has launched a venture capital (VC) fund based on artificial intelligence (AI).
The Quantum Light Capital fund is aiming to raise $200 million for its first close with Storonsky planning to invest some of his own capital.
The fund’s webpage describes it as “the first truly systematic VC and growth equity firm” and as “a technology company by a team of tech unicorn founders, quant traders, AI scientists and engineers”.
In comments made to Forbes magazine, Storonsky stated that the fund launch was partly inspired by the poor quality of current VC products.
“Based on my experience as an entrepreneur for the last eight years I found VCs’ product pretty frustrating,” he said, pointing to an element of “crowd mentality” in the sector.
He has hired a team of six data scientists and engineers to mine sources such as LinkedIn and corporate filings in search of promising startups, telling Forbes that he believes in a “model without human judgment” to avoid the “crowd mentality” that hinders VC funds.
Storonsky is not the first fintech founder to launch an investment fund. Niklas Adalberth, co-founder of Swedish payments fintech Klarna launched a $200 million VC fund in January while Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek launched a €1 billion VC fund called Prima Materia to fund deep-tech “moonshot projects”.
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