两位谷歌前高管共同创立了一支规模为1130万美元的投资基金，旨在支持处于早期发展阶段的AI初创企业。他们认为，企业进行AI技术试验的时代已经结束，未来客户只会为那些真正能够证明自身价值的产品付费。
Two Google alumni have closed an $11.3 million fund to back early-stage AI startups, betting that the era of enterprise AI experimentation is ending and that customers will increasingly pay only for products that prove their worth.
这家名为BAG Ventures的投资基金由前谷歌副总裁Bontia Stewart与前CapitalG投资合伙人Jackson Georges Jr.共同创立。在经过大约两年的筹备和投资后，该基金终于正式成立。迄今为止，BAG Ventures已经投资了10家初创企业，其中包括软件公司SXD、AI旅行服务提供商BizTrip以及智能决策平台Nomadic。
BAG Ventures, founded by Bontia Stewart, a former Google vice president, and Jackson Georges Jr., a former CapitalG partner, closed the fund after about two years of investing from it as it came together. The firm has already backed 10 companies, including the software company SXD, the AI travel agent BizTrip, and the agentic reasoning platform Nomadic.
该基金主要投资于AI基础设施、计算技术、物理智能与边缘计算、安全技术、企业治理系统以及垂直领域的SaaS（软件即服务）解决方案。单笔投资金额通常在10万至50万美元之间，团队计划在未来两年内将剩余的资金全部投入投资中。
It invests in startups in areas like AI infrastructure, compute, physical and edge AI, security, governance, and vertical SaaS. Check sizes range from $100,000 to $500,000, and the team hopes to invest the rest of the fund over the next two years.
Stewart在谷歌工作了17年，其中近10年担任副总裁职务。在此期间，她还曾担任谷歌早期AI投资基金Gradient Ventures的董事会成员。她同时也是Female Founders Fund和Operator Collective的有限合伙人。与Georges一起，她共同领导了拥有超过450名成员的天使投资联盟BAG Collective。
Stewart spent 17 years at Google, including nearly a decade as a vice president. During that time, she also served on the board of Gradient Ventures, Google’s early-stage AI fund. She is a limited partner in the Female Founders Fund and the Operator Collective. With Georges, she also co-led the angel syndicate BAG Collective, which has more than 450 members.
Georges曾先后在GE Healthcare和谷歌工作，并在谷歌期间结识了Stewart。后来他成为Alphabet旗下成长投资基金CapitalG的合伙人。两人还共同参与了伯克利Black Venture Institute的首批培训项目。
Georges worked at GE Healthcare and at Google, where he met Stewart. He later became a partner at CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth fund. He and Stewart were in the first cohort of the Black Venture Institute at Berkeley.
两人表示，他们的优势在于拥有广泛的资源网络和人脉。Georges表示：“我们成立BAG Ventures的目的是为了缓解AI领域中创始人（创业者）与实际运营者之间的信息不对称问题。”
The pair say their edge is access. They launched BAG Ventures to “address the emerging AI divide between founders and operators,” Georges said.
“创始人需要获得进入目标客户组织内部的机会，而我们认识许多愿意支持早期创始人、却不知道该如何支持的资深运营专家，”他说。因此，“我们不只是给创始人提供资本；还会直接引荐潜在客户，并提供切实可操作的[市场进入]建议，”他继续说道。他补充称，该公司的有限合伙人包括谷歌，以及来自英伟达、亚马逊和Snowflake的运营专家；目前该公司共有150多家有限合伙人，来自各类不同公司。
“Founders needed inside access to the organizations they wanted to sell into, and we knew so many high-level operators who wanted to support early founders but didn’t know how,” he said. As a result, “we don’t just give founders capital; we give them direct warm introductions to potential customers and hands-on [go-to-market] advice,” he continued, adding that the firm, whose limited partners include Google, as well as operators from Nvidia, Amazon and Snowflake, has more than 150 limited partners altogether at a wide range of companies.
“许多机构都拥有自己的运营专家网络，”乔治说，“但我们希望打造一个真正有用的运营网络。”乔治的投资逻辑建立在他所看到的企业AI采购方式转变之上。他说，“试验性沙盒”阶段即将结束。“企业目前正大力关注单位经济效益，”他指出，“它们不再仅仅为开放式聊天机器人付费，而是在为确定性解决方案付费。真正的价值来自能够深度融入既有工作流并实际完成工作的解决方案。”
“Lots of firms have an operator network,” Georges said. “We want to be one that’s genuinely useful.”Georges’s investing thesis rests on a shift he sees in how enterprises buy AI. He said the “experimental sandbox” phase is ending. “Enterprises are dialing in heavily on the unit economics right now,” he noted. “They aren’t just paying for open-ended chatbots anymore; they are paying for deterministic solutions. The real value is coming from solutions that integrate deeply into legacy workflows and actually execute the work.”
examples include? Need translate: 例如，包括自动执行代码审查和解析法律文件。 I accidentally English. Must Chinese. So second paragraph end: “例如，自动执行代码审查和为此，BAG Ventures希望核心技术团队此前有过合作，拥有最小可行产品和至少一位合作伙伴，并且“有一条非常明确的路径，能够在24小时内实现商业变现”。
Examples include automating code reviews and parsing legal documents. Georges is preparing for a world where enterprises no longer buy per-user seats for SaaS tools. “We’ll be buying completed jobs and outcomes driven by multi-agent workflows,” he said. Toward that end, BAG Ventures wants core technical teams that have worked together before, have a minimum viable product and at least one partner, and have “a very clear path to monetization within 24 hours.”
他还希望支持那些打造深度嵌入企业工作流、并获取无法通过网络抓取获得的专有数据的产品的创始人。他指出，随着前沿人工智能实验室自行推出更多产品，如果不具备这些条件，那么初创公司的产品即使在技术上切实可行，也不足以使其长期生存。“如果一家初创公司只是对前沿模型API进行简单封装，它们就会被彻底淘汰。”
He also wants to back founders building products that go deep into enterprise workflows and capture proprietary data that can’t be scraped. With frontier AI labs launching more products themselves, not even a technically sound product from a startup is enough to succeed in the long run otherwise, he observed, and “if a startup is just a thin wrapper around a frontier model API, they’re going to get wiped out.”
正因如此，他们才会寻找那些打造深度嵌入企业工作流、并获取无法通过网络抓取获得的专有数据的团队。“我们希望投资掌控意图层、具备客户锁定效应，并能够挺过下一款重磅模型发布的公司。”
It’s why they look for teams building products that go deep into enterprise workflows and capture proprietary data that can’t be scraped. “We want companies that own the intent layer and have the customer lock-in to survive the next big model release.”
该基金还在关注向高度监管行业销售产品的初创企业，因为这些行业的数据隐私需求可能需要专业化的解决方案。Georges表示：“这意味着要确保内部数据流安全、建立可接受使用护栏，并部署持续自动化红队测试。我们已经在被投企业Defendremate身上看到这种方法取得了良好效果。”Georges还表示，企业将需要面向AI智能体等非人类工作者的身份与访问管理工具。
The firm is also looking at startups selling into highly regulated industries, where data privacy needs may require specialization. “That means securing internal data flows, building acceptable-use guardrails, and deploying continuous automated red-teaming,” said Georges. “We’re already seeing this approach work well with our portfolio company Defendremate.”Georges also said enterprises will need Identity and Access Management tools for non-human workers, like AI agents.
“能够专门为智能体系统构建更高层级的‘零信任’架构和编排基础设施的初创企业，将填补一个规模巨大且利润丰厚的空白。”他说。
“Startups that can build the next level of ‘zero trust’ architecture and orchestration rails specifically for agentic systems are going to fill a massive and very lucrative gap,” he said.