About This Fund
Air Street Capital II is a $121 million AI-native venture capital fund managed by Air Street Capital, the London-based firm founded by Nathan Benaich. The fund closed on 6 September 2023 and represents the firm's second vehicle, more than tripling the $17 million raised for Fund I in 2020. Fund II backs AI-first companies at the earliest stages across North America and Europe, with a particular emphasis on foundational AI research translating into commercial products in technology and life sciences. Notable angel investors who supported the fund include Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek and Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, alongside operators from OpenAI, Isomorphic Labs, Hugging Face, Recursion, and Wayve.
The fund's investment strategy is built around a single conviction: AI founders deserve an AI-native investor. Air Street operates with a first-cheque, lead-round model, taking concentrated positions in a small number of high-conviction companies and maintaining long holding periods to allow compounding scientific discovery to translate into durable commercial value. Sectors in scope include applied AI, drug discovery, AI data infrastructure, computer vision, and AI-enabled healthcare and safety applications. The firm publishes the annual State of AI Report, giving its team structural insight into the frontier of AI capability and deployment.
Fund II built on the track record established by Fund I, which backed portfolio companies including Allcyte (acquired by Exscientia in Nasdaq's largest-ever European biotech IPO), Valence Discovery (acquired by Recursion Pharmaceuticals to form Valence Labs), Intenseye and V7. With Fund II, Air Street expanded its investment universe to include AI unicorns such as Black Forest Labs and ElevenLabs, while generating further exits including Adept (acquired by Amazon) and Graphcore (acquired by SoftBank). Air Street Capital II was followed by the firm's record-breaking $232 million Fund III closed in March 2026, cementing Air Street as one of the largest solo GP venture firms in Europe.