224 Ventures

224ventures.com

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Shaun Johnson — Founder & Managing Partner

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Yann LeCun — Frontier AI Partner

yann@amilabs.xyz

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Oriol Vinyals — Frontier AI Partner

vinyals@deepmind.com

224 Ventures invests $1-5 million as a participatory investor at the earliest stage, backing technical founders across applications, robotics, infrastructure, and core intelligence.

Rather than leading rounds, the firm writes checks alongside lead investors and helps founders construct a syndicate, positioning itself as a network amplifier for AI-native startups.

224 states it has already begun backing technical founders under this thesis but has not named specific portfolio companies in its launch materials.

224 Ventures launched in August 2026 with $100 million in assets under management, backed by a founding LP base of 244 individuals, primarily AI operators including frontier researchers, product and engineering leaders, chief AI/data officers, and go-to-market executives across the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Paris, Toronto, London, and Tel Aviv.

Leadership

224 Ventures was founded by Shaun Johnson, who previously co-founded AIX Ventures alongside Richard Socher, Pieter Abbeel, Anthony Goldbloom, and Chris Manning, where he led deals into companies including Perplexity, Chroma, and Workhelix, departing AIX Ventures in December 2025.

Prior to venture investing, Johnson held VP of Engineering, Product, and Design roles at Lilt and NimbleRx, and holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and engineering degrees from Stanford and UT Austin.

Yann LeCun, former Chief AI Scientist at Meta, a Turing Award co-winner, and a professor at NYU, joins as Frontier AI Partner; he is also Executive Chairman of AMI Labs, a Paris-based AI startup he founded.

Oriol Vinyals, formerly a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind where he co-led AlphaStar and Gemini, joins as the firm's other Frontier AI Partner. All three invest exclusively through 224 and are involved in sourcing, evaluating, and voting on every investment.

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Investment Strategy

224 Ventures writes $1-5 million checks as a participatory investor alongside lead investors rather than leading rounds itself, helping construct syndicates around its portfolio companies as needed.

The firm's LP network of 244 AI operators functions as a sourcing channel and a source of potential customers, design partners, co-founders, employees, mentors, and follow-on investors for portfolio founders.

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