Storonsky’s VC fund would be powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Nikolai Storonsky, the billionaire co-founder of fintech and challenger bank Revolut, is building his own AI-powered venture fund to remove the element of “crowd mentality” in current day venture financing. It’s a clubby world driven by relationships, and a sitting target for disruption, in his view. (Forbes)

Why AI?

The AI orientation on Storonsky’s VC fund stems from his previous stint as a Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse quant trader.

His fund, dubbed QuantumLight, will make investing judgments based on cold, hard data mined from LinkedIn, corporate filings and other databases, and the use of Aleph, it’s proprietary quantitative decision engine.

“I personally believe in having a model without having human judgment,” he told Forbes. “Different people have different opinions, and this how you end up with this crowd mentality.”

The fund website says it is the first truly systematic venture capital and growth equity firm – “we are built as a technology company by a team of tech unicorn founders, quant traders, AI scientists and engineers,” it adds, and who will use “technology and systematic strategies to identify the next 10x companies.”

Disrupting VC

Storonsky is no newcomer to venture financing, having invested in Tink, a Swedish fintech startup acquired by Visa for $2.1 billion in June 2021, and French digital health company Alan, which raised $193 million at a $2.8 billion valuation in May.

He himself raised $1.8 billion to grow Revolut, an experience that doubtless has a role to play in his decision to upend venture capital.

“Based on my experience as an entrepreneur for the last eight years I found VCs’ product pretty frustrating,” said Storonsky in the Forbes interview. “In the bad times no one wants to invest, in the good times they all want to invest — so the lessons were that VCs are pretty unstable and there is some element of crowd mentality.”

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