At Two Sigma Ventures, my colleagues and I spend our time at the frontlines of how data and computing are being employed across virtually every industry to make the world work better. From finding new drug therapies, to reinventing all aspects of the financial system; from new forms of manufacturing, to making work more efficient – data and software are driving the change in our world, and we’re thrilled to play a small part in making it happen.
In the last decade, we’ve invested in 100+ startups harnessing these innovations. And as we mark our recent close on $400M of new capital to invest in the next wave of world-defining companies, we want to pause and reflect on where we’ve been and where we aspire to go.
Data + computing + human ingenuity
Ten years ago, we recognized an emerging differential that can accelerate innovation and unlock potential for companies to have a transformative impact: data + computing + human ingenuity. At the time, IBM popularized the notion that 90% of the world’s information had been created in the last two years alone. And with this explosion of information came a constellation of streaming analytics, cognitive technologies, machine learning models, open source software, and more.
Born out of Two Sigma, the $60B+ financial sciences company, we saw firsthand how engineers and data scientists had forever changed the world of finance from an industry of intuition to one of data and software. We set out to find and support visionary early-stage founders who were redefining other industries in the same way – by applying scientific rigor and discovering what we didn’t yet know about the world.
10 years, 100 startups, and just getting started
We have invested in more than 100 startups harnessing deep tech to improve lives, reimagine industries or build lasting infrastructure.
Our companies span a number of industries, from enterprise, fintech and techbio, to web3, manufacturing and consumer. What unites them is their positioning at intersections of large markets that can be innovated with data science and/or computing advancements. And perhaps more importantly, their efforts to earnestly and ambitiously challenge the status quo and improve upon it through the discovery and creation of scientific breakthroughs.
Every day, we feel lucky to play a small role in this innovation and to witness our startups’ commitment to making the world work better–from Recursion Pharmaceuticals reengineering drug discovery through digital biology, to Remote giving anyone, anywhere access to job opportunities and the ability to build wealth for themselves.*
The most ambitious ideas have yet to be discovered
As we look to the next 10+ years, we’re thrilled for the opportunity to back entrepreneurs scaling not just to get big, but to do big things. Like finding ways to diagnose illness from an image; making logistics more efficient than humanly possible, and letting computers converse like humans.
In the last decade, we saw an explosion of information and computing that created tremendous innovation in software and services. In many ways, it has both unleashed humanity’s potential, but also overtaken us. With so much to remedy in the world – climate change, misinformation, inequality, inefficiency, and more – we believe deep tech will have an outsized impact in solving the most important challenges of our time. But it won’t be easy.
We believe humanity is still in beta, with the majority of progress for society still ahead of us. And we’re thrilled to have the chance to influence it, by helping the brightest founders take flight, the most powerful data science reach its potential, and the most impactful projects come to life.
We’re here to find and support the entrepreneurs who are on path to making the world work better, applying tech for the benefit of humanity, and building the iconic companies of the future.
