How EQT Ventures' Motherbrain uses AI to find promising startups

Since Sweden's EQT Ventures embraced AI to drive the way it makes investments, the company has learned that reaping the benefits of algorithms is a journey full of detours that involve experimenting, fine-tuning, and adaption to achieve the promised efficiencies and insights. Following the firm's launch in 2016, a team there developed Motherbrain, an AI-driven system whose goal is to help EQT spot the hidden gems that no one else sees and back them early. So far, Motherbrain has directly led to investments in five startups out of the 50 the firm has made. That may seem like a disappointment. But according to Henrik Landgren, the EQT partner who took the lead on developing the system, the practical value so far has been the ability to make partners more productive by prioritizing which companies are worth spending time getting to know.