Ashton Kutcher is moving into a new chapter as an investor. After co-founding Sound Ventures with Guy Oseary 11 years ago, he is stepping away from the firm to launch a separate VC fund with Morgan Beller.
The new firm has not yet made its name public. But its expected focus is already clear: early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech startups.
A split built around investment focus
Kutcher’s departure does not appear to reflect trouble at Sound Ventures. The firm has backed companies including Brex and Gusto, and it was also an early investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs.
Instead, the move appears tied to different views on which startup stages to target. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sound Ventures has leaned toward backing companies that are already more established, while Kutcher is looking toward very early-stage startups.
That distinction matters. A later-stage or more established company may already have a clearer product, team, market, or technical direction. A very early-stage company is usually a more speculative bet, especially in areas such as AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech, where the work can depend on difficult engineering or hard science.
Kutcher will not fully disconnect from Sound Ventures. He will continue to serve as an adviser to the firm. At the same time, Oseary and Sound general partner Effie Epstein will advise Kutcher and Beller’s new firm.
Why Morgan Beller matters to the new firm
Kutcher is co-founding the new VC firm with Morgan Beller, who until recently was a general partner at NFX, a seed-focused VC outfit. Beller previously co-led cryptocurrency project Libra at Meta and also spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Those details help explain the shape of the new fund. The source describes Kutcher and Beller as focused on early-stage investments, and Beller’s recent role at a seed-focused firm fits that direction.
The pairing also brings together two investors with experience across different parts of technology investing. Kutcher is tied to Sound Ventures’ history of high-conviction bets, including its early AI lab investments. Beller brings a background that includes seed investing, cryptocurrency work at Meta, and time at Andreessen Horowitz.
For a new firm aimed at AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech, that mix is notable. The target areas are not simply applications built on top of existing software platforms. They are described as startups built around hard science and engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone.
From AI labs to the systems underneath
The move is also important because it suggests a shift in where some AI-related venture money may go next. Sound Ventures built its reputation around concentrated, high-conviction bets in category-leading AI labs. Kutcher’s new fund appears to be looking at the layer underneath those companies.
That layer includes the infrastructure and energy that power AI companies. In plain terms, the new thesis is not only about backing the most visible AI labs. It is also about backing the systems, tools, and technical foundations that those labs and other advanced technology companies may depend on.
The source names three areas of focus for Kutcher and Beller:
- AI infrastructure, which points to the technical layer needed to support AI development and deployment.
- Energy, which the source frames as part of the layer powering AI companies.
- Deep tech, meaning startups built around hard science and engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone.
This is a different kind of bet from investing only in software products or already prominent AI companies. It is a bet that the next wave of valuable startups may emerge from the demanding technical base beneath AI.
Sound Ventures remains connected
The separation is not being presented as a hard break. Kutcher will continue as an adviser to Sound Ventures, and Oseary and Epstein will advise the new firm. That arrangement keeps both sides connected even as their investment strategies diverge.
Sound Ventures still has a track record that includes companies like Brex and Gusto, along with early investments in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs. Kutcher’s new firm, by contrast, is being framed around earlier-stage opportunities in infrastructure, energy, and deep tech.
Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev, who tracks top-performing VCs, highlighted Kutcher’s standing as an investor. “He and his fund consistently make it onto [my] rankings of top unicorn investors. An interesting case!” he wrote on X.
Kutcher’s network also includes a long-running connection to OpenAI’s Sam Altman. The source says Kutcher has known Altman since Altman founded Loopt, years before the launch of the ChatGPT maker.
What the new fund signals
The new firm’s name is still unknown, and the available details remain limited. What is clear is the direction: Kutcher and Beller are aiming at early-stage companies working on the technical foundations around AI, energy, and deep tech.
That makes the launch more than a personnel change at Sound Ventures. It reflects a specific view of where opportunity may sit as AI companies grow: not only in the labs building models, but also in the infrastructure and energy systems that make those companies possible.
For founders in those categories, the new fund could become a relevant investor to watch. For Sound Ventures, the relationship continues through advisory roles. For Kutcher, it is a move from one well-known VC platform into a new firm built around an earlier-stage, infrastructure-heavy thesis.