Artificial intelligence (AI) luminary Andrew Ng, PhD, has launched the AI Fund with $175 million to fund new businesses that aim to apply AI technology to improve human life.
Ng founded the Google Brain deep-learning project and was co-founder and co-chairman of online training provider Coursera. He also served as vice president and chief scientist at Baidu, as well as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He also led the Stanford Machine Learning Group, which is involved in a number of imaging AI projects such as its CheXNet algorithm for detecting pneumonia on chest x-rays and the Musculoskeletal Radiographs (MURA) project for spotting abnormalities on musculoskeletal x-rays.
The AI Fund is initially providing funding to Landing.AI, a company launched by Ng in December to use AI in manufacturing. Ng will lead the AI Fund as general partner, while Eva Wang will be partner and chief operating officer. Wang was formerly a partner at Fenwick & West.
In addition, former Sycamore CEO Steven Syverud will be a partner in the AI Fund. Syverud previously led Coursera's Specialization product, according to Ng. The AI fund includes investments from New Enterprise Assoc. (NEA), Sequoia, Greylock Partners, the SoftBank Group, and others, Ng said.
