Air Street Capital Raises $121 Million for AI Startups

AI-focused venture capital firm Air Street Capital says it has closed a new $121 million fund.

The London-based company announced Wednesday (Sept. 6) that the funding will allow it to support early-stage artificial intelligence (AI) firms as that sector continues to bloom.

“Air Street has grown from a conviction that AI founders deserve an AI-native investor into a first fund of 19 AI-first technology and life science companies across North America and Europe,” Nathan Benaich, the firm’s founder, wrote on the company blog.

Based in London, Air Street backs companies in the “AI-first” technology and life science sector. In an interview with Bloomberg News Wednesday, Benaich defined “AI-first” thusly:

“If you rip out the AI component of the product, it doesn’t work,” he said. “And the customer doesn’t buy it.”

In addition to investing in such companies, Benaich says Air Street is devoted to speaking out against “powerful institutions or outdated policies” that hold AI back.

“Whether this is campaigning for a better deal for university spinouts with spinout.fyi, urging European governments to pursue a more ambitious R&D agenda, or pushing back against doomerism and regulatory capture — you can expect to hear even more from us in the coming years,” he said.

His comments come at a moment when, as noted here earlier this week, the AI world is at something of a crossroads.

“Many of the bleeding-edge large language models (LLMs) from firms like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic were updated in August — yet outside of China, little real progress has been made on the regulatory front as it relates to enacting guardrails around the new technology’s applications and capabilities,” PYMNTS wrote.

But that could soon change, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) kicking off his series of bipartisan “AI Insight Forums” next week, and reportedly promising a “supercharged” path to AI regulation when the Senate comes back from its summer break.

“In the twenty-first century, we cannot behave like ostriches in the sand when it comes to AI. We must treat AI with the same level of seriousness as national security, job creation and our civil liberties,” Schumer said.