Well, let's be completely honest: the current startups landscape is incredibly messy. There are plenty of ways to get funded to start your own company -- but how many of them are not simply'dumb money'? How many of them give you some additional value and really help you scale your business? This problem is particularly relevant for emerging exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. For those specific fields, highly specialized investors/advisors are essential for the success of the venture. This is the reason why I wrote a long post on AI investors some time ago and why I am following up now with accelerators, which can be a valid investment alternative and business opportunity but that are commonly not fully understood.

Investing in AI is not an easy job: AI technologies are black boxes and unless you are able to dig into lines of code they may be inscrutable. Simply looking at proof of concepts might not be enough to really understand the underlying stack behind specific applications, and this represents a big barrier for investors to efficiently allocate their capitals. Generalist investors found then alternative ways to discern investable companies from the pile of tech-driven companies out there. AI specialists are luckily not that naive, but they are able to go much deeper and look behind the veil. I then compiled a list as extensive as possible of every investor I read or bumped into over the past months. A final remark: there is a fund which does not make AI investments, but it is an AI investor.

Investing in AI is not an easy job: AI technologies are black boxes and unless you are able to dig into lines of code they may be inscrutable. Simply looking at proof of concepts might not be enough to really understand the underlying stack behind specific applications, and this represents a big barrier for investors to efficiently allocate their capitals. Generalist investors found then alternative ways to discern investable companies from the pile of tech-driven companies out there. Therefore, if a team is composed of scientists/researchers and has patents (obtained or pending), it would already be a good candidate for an investment even without any revenues. This is driven by top tech companies acquiring smaller startups simply for their'brain power' rather than their actual numbers.