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Ex/Ante Raises $33M from Top Investors like Andreessen and USV
Zoe Weinberg's unique thesis has caught the attention of some of the most renowned VCs in the industry.
Jackson Fordyce
November 03, 2023
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The Story: Privacy, security, and information integrity. These are the principles in which venture capital firm ex/ante is dedicated to investing. And the firm just raised its first fund of $33 million dollars from industry leaders like Cendana Capital, Marc Andreessen, the Ford Foundation, and Union Square Ventures.
Spun out of Schmidt Futures, the venture arm of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, ex/ante’s investment thesis focuses on something called “agentic tech.”
Agentic tech advocates for tools that support human agency. According to the firm’s site, “Now more than ever, technology is being deployed as a tool of oppression, manipulation, and control. We are vulnerable to surveillance, hacking, censorship, and disinformation. We don’t own our own data, or even know who does.”
The fund is managed by Zoe Weinberg, a 32-year-old former NGO aid worker with expertise in public policy on the congressional National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in Washington, D.C., and degrees from Harvard, Stanford and Yale. Partnering with her is Michael Mosier, a former top official in the U.S. Treasury and DOJ.
Before ex/ante began, Weinberg and Mosier developed a pitch: Start an investment firm for the promotion of technology that advances human agency, which is fundamental for democratic resilience across the world.
Now backed by industry powerhouses like Marc Andreessen and Union Square Ventures, ex/ante has invested in nine companies across six sectors including AI/ML, data infrastructure, and cybersecurity, all with the thesis to amplify privacy, security, and information integrity.
The Expert Take: Zoe Weinberg, founder & managing partner of ex/ante, explains what pioneering “agentic tech” looks like:
“We’re really building this against a backdrop of growing digital authoritarianism and surveillance capitalism. I think we probably all know intuitively that every move is tracked, our digital footprints are being mapped by both companies and governments, [and] we don’t own our own data or really even know where it lives—and we think it’s time to change that.”
This was the pitch Weinberg gave to investors like Cendana Capital, Marc Andreessen, the Ford Foundation, and Union Square Ventures to convince them to invest:
“I think this is a really unique opportunity both in the market and in history to pursue a strategy like this because we’re seeing the confluence of a bunch of different drivers.” Those drivers include major technological breakthroughs, a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, and growing consumer awareness and demand for enhanced privacy and self-custody, according to Weinberg.
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