Revolut’s CEO will launch an “AI-powered” VC fund

The billionaire, co-founder and CEO of fintech giant Revolut, Nikolai Storonsky, has launched a new venture capital fund called the Quantum Light Capital Fund.

Storonski, along with several other investors, will invest about $ 200 million (£ 161 million) in the new fund, which has been described as being powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

With a total of $ 1.8 billion (£ 1.45 billion), Storonski’s Revolut has become one of the most valuable start-ups in Europe, reaching an estimate of $ 33 billion last July.

The head of Revolut is now seeking to transfer his knowledge of the technology startup investment ecosystem. The Russian-born CEO said he was inspired by what he considered to be shortcomings in the traditional venture capital system.

“Based on my experience as an entrepreneur over the last eight years, I found the VCs product quite disappointing,” Storonski said.

“In bad times no one wants to invest, in good times everyone wants to invest – so the lesson was that venture capital is quite volatile and there is some element to the crowd mentality.”

Revolut CEO: the fund will avoid the “crowd mentality”

The Quantum Light Fund will use an artificial intelligence-driven system designed by a team of data scientists and engineers to search corporate databases and LinkedIn to identify startups with promising growth without relying on “human judgment.”

“Different people have different opinions, and this is how you find yourself with this mentality of the crowd,” Storonski said.

This method is inspired by a handful of funds that track databases as a way to find new investment opportunities, although Storonski believes there is a key difference.

“I’ve interviewed a lot of people from a lot of funds and they just use data sources to identify breakthroughs, but that has nothing to do with machine learning.”

Revolut’s chief executive previously acted as an angel investor for Swedish fintech company Tink, which was later acquired by Visa for $ 2.1 billion.

Half of the Ukrainian-born Russian CEO earlier this year came out to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.