Ashton Kutcher is leaving Sound Ventures, the firm he co-founded with Guy Oseary 11 years ago, to launch a new venture capital firm with Morgan Beller. The new entity, whose name and fund size have not been disclosed, will concentrate on early-stage investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure, energy, and deep technology. Kutcher and Beller believe these sectors will produce the next generation of transformative companies.
Strategic Shift to Early-Stage Investing
The decision to depart Sound Ventures stems partly from a strategic divergence. Over the past decade, Sound Ventures gradually shifted its focus toward later-stage deals. Kutcher, however, wants to return to supporting founders at the earliest stages — the phase he finds most exciting and where he believes his insight can add the most value. The new firm will target seed and Series A rounds, filling what Kutcher sees as a growing gap as mega-funds increasingly pour capital into later-stage, high-conviction bets.
Kutcher's reputation in venture capital has long outshone his Hollywood stardom. He joined Sound Ventures in 2013 after honing his angel investing skills through A-Grade Investments, a vehicle he ran with Guy Oseary and Ron Burkle. Sound Ventures quickly built a portfolio that reads like a who's who of tech unicorns: Brex, Gusto, Robinhood, and, notably, OpenAI and Anthropic before either company became a household name. The firm also invested in World Labs, the AI company founded by Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li, and went all-in on the crypto wave with positions in Coinbase and Ripple. These bets helped Sound Ventures amass over one billion dollars in assets under management.
Morgan Beller: From Libra to Deep Tech
Morgan Beller brings a formidable resume to the partnership. She co-led the creation of Libra, Meta's ambitious cryptocurrency project that was later rebranded as Diem and eventually shuttered amid regulatory pushback. After Libra, Beller spent three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she focused on crypto and fintech investments. She then moved to NFX, a venture firm known for its early-stage focus on network effects, as a general partner. At NFX, Beller backed companies in blockchain, AI, and synthetic biology — aligning perfectly with the deep tech focus of the new firm.
Beller's experience navigating the turbulent crypto landscape and her deep ties to the Silicon Valley venture community make her a fitting co-founder. She is known for a rigorous, thesis-driven approach to investing and for advocating for patient capital in industries where technical breakthroughs take years to mature. Her network spans from the top echelons of Big Tech to scrappy university labs, a range that will be crucial for sourcing deals in AI infrastructure and energy.
Amicable Split with Sound Ventures
The departure from Sound Ventures appears to be amicable, at least on paper. Kutcher will remain a senior advisor to Sound Ventures, ensuring continuity for the firm’s existing portfolio companies. In turn, Oseary and Effie Epstein — Sound’s third general partner — will serve as advisors to the new firm. Sound Ventures will continue operating under Oseary’s leadership, managing its billion-dollar-plus asset base and pursuing its later-stage strategy.
Such clean splits are rare in venture capital, where co-founders often part ways with lingering tensions. The arrangement suggests mutual respect and a recognition that each side's new focus will not compete for the same deals. Sound Ventures will retain its stake in earlier-stage companies from Kutcher’s tenure, and the new firm will avoid investing in later-stage rounds that might conflict with its parent fund.
The Crowded AI Investment Arena
The timing of the new firm puts Kutcher and Beller in an intensely competitive field. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, startups worldwide raised a record $297 billion. AI companies captured the lion’s share. Founders Fund recently closed a six-billion-dollar growth fund dedicated to AI and defense technology. Accel raised five billion dollars for late-stage AI bets. Eclipse closed over one billion dollars for early-stage deep tech and physical industries. Almost every major VC firm now claims a deep tech or AI vertical.
What could distinguish Kutcher and Beller’s firm is its triple focus on infrastructure, energy, and deep tech — and its commitment to the earliest stages. Most of the mega-funds are writing $100 million checks into companies that have already achieved product-market fit. They are placing big bets on AI application layers, such as enterprise software and consumer chatbots. But the infrastructure and energy underpinning these applications — the data centers, the advanced chips, the grid-scale storage, the nuclear fusion startups — require patient, technically sophisticated capital that is harder to come by. This is the gap Kutcher and Beller aim to fill.
Kutcher’s Investing Track Record: More Than a Celebrity Hobby
Ashton Kutcher’s evolution from actor to venture capitalist has been closely watched. Many celebrity investors struggle to be taken seriously, but Kutcher earned respect through his disciplined process and early right calls. Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev publicly praised Kutcher’s investing record after the announcement, calling it one of the strongest in venture capital over the past decade. Indeed, Sound Ventures’ prescient bets on OpenAI and Anthropic — made years before ChatGPT went viral and before Claude became a major competitor — gave the firm a reputation for spotting technical talent and long-term trends.
Kutcher also demonstrated a willingness to double down on contrarian theses. He invested in mobility startups like Uber and Bird before the space became crowded, and he was an early backer of Airbnb. More recently, he supported companies in synthetic biology, commercial space, and climate tech. His new focus on energy and infrastructure feels like a natural extension of those convictions, given that AI’s massive compute needs are already straining the grid and driving demand for next-generation semiconductor manufacturing.
The Unanswered Questions
For all its promise, the new firm faces unanswered questions. It has not disclosed its fund size, lead investors, or even a name. The two partners will need to raise capital in a market where limited partners are increasingly selective, preferring to back established franchises with proven returns. Beller’s track record at Andreessen Horowitz and NFX is strong, and Kutcher’s name still carries weight in Hollywood circles that could open doors to family offices and entertainment-industry money. But competing against multibillion-dollar funds like Founders Fund, Accel, and Eclipse will require a differentiated angle and stellar deal flow.
Moreover, the deep tech and energy sectors often require longer time horizons and higher capital intensity than pure software plays. Infrastructure bets — such as building novel battery chemistries or small modular reactors — might take a decade to exit. Kutcher and Beller will need to convince LPs that they are prepared for this patience and that they have the technical chops to evaluate such ventures. Their combined experience — Kutcher’s data-driven approach from Sound Ventures and Beller’s technical acumen from Libra and NFX — could prove persuasive, but the proof will be in the fundraising.
In the coming months, the industry will watch closely to see which limited partners back this new endeavor, what sector theses the firm publishes, and whether it can secure allocations in the hottest AI infrastructure deals. The partners have already begun meeting with potential LPs and evaluating preliminary investment opportunities. Their public silence on specifics may be strategic, allowing them to build momentum before a formal launch.
For now, the venture capital ecosystem gains another pair of experienced, well-networked investors willing to place early bets on the machines and power systems that will run tomorrow’s artificial intelligence.