OS Fund

Last updated
OS Fund
Company type Private
Founded2014
Founder Bryan Johnson, Jeff Klunzinger
Headquarters Chicago
Products Venture capital
Website OSFund.co

OS Fund is an American venture capital fund that invests in early-stage science and technology companies. [1]

Contents

Firm

Bryan Johnson created OS Fund in October 2014, a year after selling Braintree to PayPal for $800 million. [2] He devoted $100 million from the sale to establishing the fund. Johnson and Jeff Klunzinger serve as the fund's general partners. [3] [4]

The fund draws its name from the acronym for operating system (OS), the software that underlies the basic functions of computers and provides a foundation for other applications.[ citation needed ] OS Fund focuses on investment in technologies and platforms in genomics, synthetic biology, computationally derived therapeutics, advanced materials, and diagnostics. [5]

In September 2015, OS Fund published the methodology it uses to evaluate investments in the field of synthetic biology. In order to promote the brand, Johnson said the fund publicly released the "playbook" on its website to encourage others to invest in emerging sciences. [6]

Origins

Johnson has said he launched the fund in response to a pullback in federal support of research and development, [3] and because of a general reluctance by more traditional venture capital firms to make science-related investments. [7]

Investments

OS Fund focuses on early-stage, computationally driven companies that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop platform technologies in genomics, synthetic biology, computationally derived therapeutics, advanced materials, and diagnostics.

Notable OS Fund investments include the following:

Related Research Articles

Tom Knight is an American synthetic biologist and computer engineer, who was formerly a senior research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a part of the MIT School of Engineering. He now works at the synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks, which he cofounded in 2008.

Khosla Ventures is an American venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, focused on early-stage companies in the Internet, computing, mobile, financial services, agriculture, healthcare and clean technology sectors. Some of its most successful investments include Affirm, DoorDash, Square, Impossible Foods, Instacart, and OpenAI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accel (company)</span> Venture capital firm

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.

Greycroft is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $2 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dana Settle, and Ian Sigalow. The firm is headquartered in New York City and Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tech Coast Angels</span> American venture capital firm

TCA Venture Group is the leading source of funding to early-stage companies in Southern California. In 2023, TCA had about 400 members. In August 2014, an analysis by CB Insights ranked TCA No.1 out of 370 angel groups on “Network Centrality” and No. 5 overall in “Investor Mosaic.”

Michelle Dipp is an American scientist, businesswoman, and investor. She is the co-founder and a managing partner at Biospring Partners and serves on the board of Abzena and Kiniciti.

Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $35 billion as of March 2022.

Braintree is a Chicago-based company that primarily deals in mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies. The company was acquired by PayPal on 26 September 2013.

Arie S. Belldegrun, FACS, is an Israeli-American urologic oncologist, billionaire businessman and investor.

Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, next-generation compute, semiconductor manufacturing and other technologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bryan Johnson</span> American entrepreneur (born 1977)

Bryan Johnson is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, writer and author. He is the founder and CEO of Kernel, a company creating devices that monitor and record brain activity, and OS Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage science and technology companies.

Rothenberg Ventures, known briefly as Frontier Technology Venture Capital, was an American venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2012 by Mike Rothenberg. It invested in more than 100 companies, including Bustle, Robinhood, Revel Systems, and SpaceX, and focused its investments on virtual reality and other frontier technologies. As of January 2021, the firm's status with the California Franchise Tax Board is "forfeited".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brainly</span> Educational technology company

Brainly is an education company based in Kraków, Poland, with headquarters in New York City. It is an AI-powered homework help platform targeting students and parents. As of November 2020, Brainly reported having 15 million daily active users, making it the world's most popular education app. In 2024, FlexOS reported Brainly as the #1 Generative AI Tool in the education category and the #6 Generative AI Tool overall. Also in 2024, Andreessen Horowitz reported Brainly as #6 in the Top 50 Gen AI Mobile Apps by monthly active users.

VentureCrowd is an Australian multi asset class crowdfunding platform, headquartered in Sydney, including equity crowdfunding, property crowdfunding and debt-based crowdfunding. VentureCrowd completed the largest Australian equity crowdfunding raise, $4.2 million, for taxi-booking and payment software company Ingogo in May 2015. This deal is ranked 8th on the List of highest funded equity crowdfunding projects. This deal is ranked 8th on the List of highest funded equity crowdfunding projects. In June 2016, VentureCrowd raised more than $900,000 for a Western Sydney residential project - a 35-lot development in Riverstone East, in partnership with the property developer ClearState. In August 2016, a second project raised $1,700,000 for a 44-lot development project in Austral.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aurora Biosciences</span>

Aurora Biosciences was a biotechnology company founded in 1995 in San Diego to commercialize fluorescence assays based on Roger Y. Tsien's discoveries concerning green fluorescent protein and its uses in basic research - work for which Tsien eventually won the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry along with two other chemists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ShapeShift</span> Swiss digital asset trading company

ShapeShift is a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Switzerland. As of 2018, the company was run out of Denver, Colorado. A 2018 investigation by the Wall Street Journal alleged that ShapeShift had facilitated money laundering of $90 million in funds from criminal activities over a two-year period.

Stash Financial, Inc., or simply Stash, is an American financial technology and financial services company based in New York, NY. The company operates both a web platform and mobile apps, allowing users to incrementally invest small amounts, commonly known as micro-investing. It also provides robo advice. By summer 2017, it had approximately 1 million users. As of July 2020, the number has grown to over 5 million.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insilico Medicine</span> Biotechnology company

Insilico Medicine is a biotechnology company based in Pak Shek Kok, Hong Kong in Hong Kong Science Park near the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in New York, at The Cure by Deerfield. The company combines genomics, big data analysis, and deep learning for in silico drug discovery.

Ginkgo Bioworks is an American biotech company founded in 2008 by five scientists from MIT, headed by Jason Kelly. The company specializes in using genetic engineering to produce bacteria with industrial applications for other biotech companies, saving other companies the cost of reproducing the initial stages of design in synthetic biology. The self-proclaimed "Organism Company" was one of the world's largest privately held biotech companies, valued at $4.2 billion in 2019. It raised $290 million in September and $350 million in October of that year. Ginkgo Bioworks went public on the New York Stock Exchange via a SPAC merger on September 17, 2021.

Zymergen was an American biotechnology company based in Emeryville, California. The company applies genomics and machine learning to research and design chemical producing genetically modified organisms. It claimed that its manufacturing process was safer and cheaper than traditional manufacturing, but was unable to demonstrate this. Shortly after going public in 2021, it was reported that the company was facing difficulties in manufacturing and struggling to make revenue. In July 2022, Ginkgo Bioworks agreed to acquire Zymergen for $300 million.

References

  1. "OS Fund LLC: Private Company Information". Bloomberg. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  2. Dameron, Emerson (October 21, 2014). "Departed Braintree founder starts $100 million venture fund". Built In Chicago. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  3. 1 2 Mims, Christopher (October 20, 2014). "Humanity's Last Great Hope: Venture Capitalists". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 27 May 2021.
  4. "About". OS Fund. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  5. Johnson, Bryan (October 20, 2014). "Rewrite the OS, Change the World". Medium. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  6. Knapp, Alex (September 15, 2015). "Braintree Founder Unveils Open Source Playbook For Science Investors". Forbes. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  7. "Manifesto". OS Fund. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  8. Gormley, Brian (March 18, 2015). "Ginkgo Bioworks Raises $9M to 'Engineer' Food Flavors, Fragrances". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  9. Buhr, Sarah. "Why The First YC-Backed Biotech Company May Just Be The Future Of Pharma". TechCrunch. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  10. "Ginkgo Bioworks Secures $45 Million from Viking Global, OS Fund, Y Combinator and Felicis Ventures" (Press release). Boston: Business Wire. July 23, 2015. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  11. Buhr, Sarah (June 3, 2015). "YC Alum Atomwise Raises $6 Million To Further The Advancement Of Artificial Intelligence In Drug Discovery". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  12. Klunzinger, Jeff (2018-07-24). "Moving drug discovery into the fast lane: OS Fund invests in twoXAR's AI-driven approach". Medium. Retrieved 2019-11-01.
  13. Castellanos, Sara (2020-02-05). "Where Computing Is Headed—Beyond Quantum". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2020-05-25.
  14. Mangalindan, JP (October 20, 2014). "Crazy, insane start-ups are this tech investor's meat and potatoes". Fortune. Retrieved 8 June 2015.