Kutcher’s exit doesn’t appear to be a sign of trouble at Sound Ventures — investors often leave firms that are underperforming, but that’s not the case here. The firm, which has backed companies like Brex and Gusto, was also an early investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs.

The split is also notable for what it signals about where AI money is heading next: Sound built its reputation on concentrated, high-conviction bets in category-leading AI labs, while Kutcher’s new fund appears to be chasing the layer underneath those companies — the infrastructure and energy that power them.

“He and his fund consistently make it onto [my] rankings of top unicorn investors. An interesting case!” Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev, who tracks top-performing VCs, wrote on X.

The actor has known OpenAI’s Sam Altman since Altman founded Loopt — years before the launch of the ChatGPT maker.