Ashton Kutcher exited Sound Ventures to launch a new dedicated AI infrastructure fund with Morgan Beller, signaling venture capital's intense focus on AI buildout.

Ashton Kutcher is departing Sound Ventures, the venture firm he co-founded with Guy Oseary eleven years ago, to launch a new fund with Morgan Beller. Beller, a former general partner at NFX, previously co-led Meta's Libra cryptocurrency project and spent nearly three years at Andreessen Horowitz. The name of the new firm has not yet been disclosed, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

Sound Ventures has built its reputation on concentrated bets in leading AI labs, with a portfolio that includes Brex, Gusto, and early investments in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li's World Labs. By contrast, Kutcher's new venture is expected to focus on early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, energy, and deep tech startups centered on hard science and engineering—a shift toward the foundational technology layer underpinning major AI companies. Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev, who tracks top-performing venture investors, has noted Kutcher's consistent presence on rankings of leading unicorn investors.

The departure stemmed partly from differing investment philosophies between Kutcher and Sound Ventures, with the latter favoring more established companies while Kutcher pursued early-stage opportunities. Kutcher, who has known OpenAI CEO Sam Altman since Altman's earlier venture Loopt, will remain an adviser to Sound Ventures. In turn, Oseary and Sound general partner Effie Epstein will advise Kutcher and Beller's new fund.