- Zero Shot, a new VC fund co-founded by three OpenAI alumni, has made its first close on a $100 million target.
- The fund has already backed Worktrace AI and Foundry Robotics, plus one stealth startup.
- Founding partners include Evan Morikawa, Andrew Mayne, and Shawn Jain, all former OpenAI engineers.
- The team is bearish on vibe coding, robotics video data startups, and digital twins.
Three OpenAI Veterans Bet They Know Where AI Is Headed
A group of former OpenAI engineers has quietly raised $20 million in a first close toward a $100 million venture fund called Zero Shot. The name is a nod to the AI training term, and the thesis is straightforward: the people who built ChatGPT, DALL·E, and Codex think they can spot AI winners better than most VCs.
The founding team has five partners. Evan Morikawa, former head of applied engineering at OpenAI during the launch of DALL·E and ChatGPT through Codex, is now at robotics startup Generalist. Andrew Mayne, OpenAI’s original prompt engineer and host of The OpenAI Podcast, founded AI consultancy Interdimensional. Shawn Jain is a former OpenAI researcher who went on to found GenAI startup Synthefy. They are joined by Kelly Kovacs, previously a founding partner at 01A, the growth-stage firm founded by Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, and Brett Rounsaville, formerly of Twitter and Disney.
Backing Builders, Skipping Hype
Zero Shot has already written checks. The fund backed Worktrace AI, a startup founded by former OpenAI product manager Angela Jiang that raised a $10 million seed round from investors including Mira Murati and OpenAI’s Fund. It also invested in Foundry Robotics, which raised a $13.5 million seed led by Khosla Ventures to build AI-enhanced factory robotics. A third investment remains in stealth.
What the team is avoiding matters as much as what it is backing. Mayne is bearish on vibe coding, predicting that model makers will render standalone platforms unnecessary. Morikawa dismisses most robotics startups relying on video data for embodiment training. “There’s a lot of hoping and praying going on right now that someone in the research world will figure out how to transfer the embodiment gap,” he told TechCrunch. “That’s nowhere near possible.” The fund’s advisory board includes Diane Yoon, OpenAI’s former head of people, Steve Dowling, former head of communications at OpenAI and Apple, and Luke Miller, former OpenAI product leader.
