MIT AI Venture Studio

Overview

Join MAS.665 Foundations of AI Ventures: Venture Studio class. The rapid developments in AI can enable or accelerate major positive impact throughout the world. This semester’s course will be structured as a "Venture Studio" with mentors and engagement with Scientists, VCs, CEOs and Academics. The course will focus on opportunities in the broad sectors of digital health, sustainability and mobility with data and AI centric technologies such as identity, privacy-tech, foundation models, blockchain, VR/AR and Web3. Follow these steps to register for the course.

Step 0: Registration : For MIT (Link), For Harvard (Link)
Step 1: Questionnaire (Link 1) before September 5th
Step 2: Finishing the Online AI blockchain course (Link 2) by September 12th

Pre-Homework policy ALL registered students must complete Step 1 to be eligible to attend the first class and ALL registered students are expected to finish Step 2 before the second class. Note: If a student has studied AI or Blockchain, or worked on it in the last 3 years, they can receive an exemption and credit for Step 2 by uploading a resume in the form.

Class Schedule: Thursdays 10 AM -12 noon in room E14-633 at MIT Media Lab starting September 5, 2024

Sign up for future updates: (Link)
Socials: (Link 1, Link 2)
Facebook group: (Link)
LinkedIn group: (Link)

Faculty

Ramesh Raskar

MIT Media Lab

Pulkit Agrawal

MIT EECS

Sertac Karaman

MIT AeroAstro, Director of LIDS

Leaders

John Werner

MIT

David Blundin

Link Ventures

Elizabeth Beth Porter

MIT Media Lab

Alex 'Sandy' Pentland

MIT Media Lab

Santanu Bhattacharya

MIT Media Lab

Hossein Rahnama

MIT Media Lab/Flybits

John Harthorne

Two Lanterns Venture Capital

Mentors

Mark Weber

MIT Media Lab and Tectonic Ventures

Michael Hayes

Practical AI

Shree Shirgurkar

Catchpoint

Chris Pease

MIT Media Lab

Taleb Alashkar

AlgoFace

Raj Simhan

EcoWiz Global

Christy Fernandez-Cull

Davinci Wearables

Satayan Mahajan

Datalign Advisory

Roman Cepeda

Link Ventures and Exponential Management, LLC

Boaz Fachler

Link Ventures

Narendra Kale

Kale Logistics

Jana Mike

UCSF and BrainMind

Rajeev Surati

Scalable Display Technologies and Skyline Nav

Mark Castleman

Intel Tiber Cloud

Brendan Mcsheffrey

DataRight.org and The Kendall Project

Steve Derezinski

C10 Labs

Background

This long running course has led to many spin offs including Dimagi, Cogito, Prosperia, Ginger, Sanergy, and nonprofit PathCheck Foundation.

Our previous class links:

All other previous AI for Impact/Global Ventures class links can be found here:

A recent MIT News article talked about the history of our course "AI for Impact" (MAS.664) and its evolution over time. The entrepreneurship-focused class has a history of about a quarter of students continuing on to start real ventures. The course started by Sandy Pentland, earlier called Development Ventures was focused on leveraging entrepreneurship to drive societal scale impact. The highly anticipated Demo Day showcase has also been reported on.

Course Outline

Class Goals:

Venture Studio format for-credit course where instructors seed and stimulate high-impact, high-value projects that are attractive for the best engineering, design, and builder students
Advance "Big Ideas" into MVP-seed-stage commercial consideration

Timeline:

Meet and Greet TBD
First day of class: September 5, 2024
Mid-term review: October 2024
Final Class Presentations and “Demo Day” awards: December 5, 2024

Class Structure:

Venture studio format, with team projects with 5-8 students per team
Guest speakers share leading-edge thinking
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) by the end of the term
Demo Day

Support for Students:

Weekly class mentor meetings on Thursday after class / guest lectures / work sessions
Class visits to local start-ups and technology companies
Data and AI scientists from startups for experience
Sessions with startup coaches

Funding:

Teams will receive milestone-based seed funds

Expected Short and Long Term Outcomes:

Student teams develop MVP and project “pitch” for final review
Student teams can submit projects for consideration in venture incubator/accelerators, 100K, Deshpande Grants etc.
Projects can be considered for funding by the MIT Engine, E14 Fund, and other investment funds
Visualize Venture Studio creates an annual event to invite key stakeholders including the general innovation community to showcase big project ideas
Visualize Venture Studio creates a funded consortium (GIFTS) with on-going course sponsorship from a diverse group of financial institutions (e.g., Venture capital firms of all stages, Investment Banks, LPs, family offices, and HNW individuals), corporates, and NGOs. No branding is allowed, however
Deep Impact projects become viable funded start-ups

Course Support: