Bayan Alizadeh stands out for staying close to the AI research world—he uses NeurIPS to meet founders and researchers and co-hosted a NeurIPS event with Zico Kolter on connecting academia and industry, a habit that traces back to his physics minor, work at Berkeley Lab, and a co-authored physics paper, and even led him to teach a networking course at Berkeley Haas. His investments follow a similar pattern of looking at what supports new technology rather than just the flashy end product, backing companies like Argus Systems for robotics data, BuildVision for construction procurement, and tools for detecting deepfakes, while also spotting reinforcement-learning “gyms” early as a way to train AI agents safely.