Opto Investments Closes AI Fund Focused on Next-Gen Innovation

Opto Investments (“Opto”) is announcing the close of its AI-focused venture fund (“AI Fund”). Opto is a platform that helps RIAs and family offices build proprietary private markets funds, and creates its own vehicles to provide curated access to high-conviction opportunities.

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The Fund takes a multi-strategy approach to offer exposure to the next generation of transformative companies and reflects Opto’s conviction that the most durable AI opportunities lie in foundational technologies—infrastructure, developer tools, and specialized frameworks—that will underpin enterprise AI adoption over the next decade. This provides differentiated exposure to the AI ecosystem beyond the semiconductors, enterprise platforms, and analytics solutions that dominate public market indices.

Opto’s AI Fund combines fund investments with select direct and co-investments sourced through Opto’s research network and diligence process. Representative holdings include:

Direct and co-investments:

• xAI (Series B): an artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, developing frontier AI systems competitive with the leading models in the field.
• Epirus (Series D): a defense technology company specializing in high-power-microwave-directed energy systems.
• ExoWatt (Series A+): a renewable energy company building modular thermal energy systems to deliver clean, 24/7 power for high-demand users like data centers.
• Higgsfield (Series A): a browser-based generative AI studio that turns text prompts into studio-quality short-form video.

Portfolio funds:

• Fusion Fund IV: a venture firm backing early-stage startups with technical or data advantages. Fund IV targets AI- and data-driven companies in healthcare, enterprise AI, and industrial technology, partnering with founders who bring deep domain expertise.
• Neo Fund 4.0: a venture fund backing technical founders at the earliest stages, led by serial entrepreneur Ali Partovi. Fund 4.0 blends early-stage and opportunistic strategies, targeting seed rounds and high-conviction later-stage opportunities within its ecosystem.
• Zero Prime Ventures Fund II: an investor in early-stage enterprise startups with technical differentiation in data infrastructure, AI/ML, devtools, blockchain, and cloud technology, led by Pete Soderling, founder of the AI Council.

A full list of the Fund’s holdings is available upon request.

“Opto sees opportunity in active, selective investing that separates signal from noise,” said Matt Malone, Head of Investment Management at Opto Investments. “We built our AI Fund to give our partner RIAs’ clients exposure to the companies actually putting AI to work. These RIAs came to us seeking a smarter way to access AI—not just the largest, high-valuation names everyone already knows.”

“Our diligence process is designed to find the companies solving the harder, less obvious problems across the stack: energy, compute, cybersecurity, tooling, orchestration, and the vertical applications that turn intelligence into output,” added Emmanuel Uwakwe, Portfolio Manager at Opto Investments.

The Fund gives Opto’s RIA and family office partners diversified exposure to venture capital, as part of the platform’s ongoing effort to build thematic, actively managed vehicles that provide access to opportunities many firms might find difficult to source, diligence, and execute independently.

“Achieving scalable, differentiated exposure to private markets requires institutional-quality infrastructure. Opto redefines that equation by making sophisticated fund construction accessible across the wealth management ecosystem,” said Stuart Katz, Chief Investment Officer at Robertson Stephens.* “The AI Fund is a great example. Opto enhances the effectiveness and productivity of an established investment team and serves as a particularly valuable partner for firms without sophisticated internal resources.”