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Owl Ventures company logo
Venture Capital
FINANCE | Investment Firms & Funds
owlvc.com

Investments

117

Portfolio Exits

10

Funds

12

Partners & Customers

1

About Owl Ventures

Owl Ventures is a San Francisco Bay Area based venture capital fund that invests in the world's leading education technology companies. The firm backs entrepreneurs with solutions that seek to meaningfully drive improvement in student achievement.

Headquarters Location

400 Pacific Ave 3rd Floor

San Francisco, California, 94133,

United States

415-277-0300

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Expert Collections containing Owl Ventures

Expert Collections are analyst-curated lists that highlight the companies you need to know in the most important technology spaces.

Find Owl Ventures in 1 Expert Collection, including Education Technology (Edtech).

E

Education Technology (Edtech)

58 items

Latest Owl Ventures News

Here's an exclusive look at the pitch deck a former Meta VP used to raise $7.5 million in seed funding for his AI chatbot tutori...

Aug 23, 2023

Sizzle AI This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Sizzle AI is a new AI tutoring chatbot startup where students can get help with STEM homework. Students can type out or send in a picture of a problem and get customized step-by-step advice. Sizzle AI was founded by an ex-Meta vice president and just raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Jerome Pesenti says he's "not sure" if he's a good tutor. As the father of four children, he would often get roped into helping them with math and science homework assignments after work, but they would sometimes hit roadblocks that most parents are all too familiar with. But over the past year, he realized that an AI chatbot could do most of the work that he was doing, like asking different questions to prompt his kids to think through problems. "I thought with all the progress in AI, we could really give people access to a better learning companion, a better tutor," he said. Pesenti was in a unique position to build this type of tool. He had over 25 years of experience working in AI and machine learning engineering, and had spent the last five years as a vice president of AI at Meta . "I wanted to do something where people say, 'this AI made my life better,'" he said. In January, he decided he wanted to build an AI tutoring assistant full-time, and founded Sizzle AI, a chatbot AI tutor that can help middle and high school students with their science, tech, engineering, and math homework. Sizzle AI has launched in both the Apple App store and Google Play store and just raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Owl Ventures , with participation from 8VC . Using the Sizzle chatbot, students can either type in a problem set from a homework assignment or take a photo of the problem and have Sizzle analyze it using AI. Then, Sizzle will respond with questions about where to begin on the problem and help the student to solve it themselves. AI chatbots often spark cheating fears in parents and teachers, but by breaking down the problems into step-by-step questions, students are encouraged to think through how to solve the problem, rather than jump straight to the answer, Pesenti explained. With Sizzle, students can also submit photos of how they worked through a problem at each step, rather than just the final answer, to show how they arrived at the solution. Other AI tutoring chatbots have popped up in recent months, most notably Khan Academy's Khanmigo chatbot. Many students are also using OpenAI's ChatGPT to help them with homework assignments and sometimes cheat on them. Sizzle AI narrows its focus for now on homework questions from middle school and high school STEM courses, such as chemistry, physics, biology, and math courses. But for Pesenti, the goal is not to give students an easy path to an answer, but to use AI to provide the customized coaching that can lead to longer-lasting learning. "We want to encourage them to try to answer the problem in as many ways as possible," said Pesenti. Sizzle currently has around a 90% accuracy rate when it comes to the final answers of the problems, said Pesenti, which is not perfect, but this is notated clearly in the app, he emphasized. Sizzle also has a feedback feature where users can flag if an answer is incorrect to help train the tutor to get better. The startup publicly launched its tutoring assistant in August, and only has a small number of student users so far. Pesenti plans to keep it free for the time being to maximize access to new learners. For Emily Bennett at Owl Ventures, Pesenti's domain expertise in AI combined with Sizzle's ability to help students with their own specific homework problems convinced her to back the company. "AI will have a profound effect on the global education system and Sizzle AI is leading the way with an app that allows all learners to learn more interactively on their own," she said. With the fresh funds from Owl Ventures and 8VC, the team's main goal is to focus on improving accuracy and acquiring new student users. But long term, they plan to expand into more subjects besides STEM, Pesenti said. See the pitch deck that Sizzle AI used to raise $7.5 million in seed funding: Sizzle

Owl Ventures Investments

117 Investments

Owl Ventures has made 117 investments. Their latest investment was in Sizzle AI as part of their Seed VC on August 8, 2023.

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Owl Ventures Investments Activity

investments chart

Date

Round

Company

Amount

New?

Co-Investors

Sources

8/22/2023

Seed VC

Sizzle AI

$7.5M

Yes

1

8/22/2023

Seed VC

Coala Saude

$2.53M

Yes

1

8/10/2023

Series B

Fizz

$25M

No

2

6/30/2023

Series C - II

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$99M

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10

6/28/2023

Seed VC

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$99M

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10

Date

8/22/2023

8/22/2023

8/10/2023

6/30/2023

6/28/2023

Round

Seed VC

Seed VC

Series B

Series C - II

Seed VC

Company

Sizzle AI

Coala Saude

Fizz

Subscribe to see more

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Amount

$7.5M

$2.53M

$25M

$99M

$99M

New?

Yes

Yes

No

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Co-Investors

Sources

1

1

2

10

10

Owl Ventures Portfolio Exits

10 Portfolio Exits

Owl Ventures has 10 portfolio exits. Their latest portfolio exit was Tinkergarten on April 04, 2023.

Date

Exit

Companies

Valuation
Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.

Acquirer

Sources

4/4/2023

Acquired

$99M

3

2/21/2023

Acq - Fin

$99M

1

12/22/2021

Acquired

$99M

13

11/8/2021

Acq - Fin - II

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$99M

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10

3/17/2021

Acq - Fin

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$99M

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10

Date

4/4/2023

2/21/2023

12/22/2021

11/8/2021

3/17/2021

Exit

Acquired

Acq - Fin

Acquired

Acq - Fin - II

Acq - Fin

Companies

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Valuation

$99M

$99M

$99M

$99M

$99M

Acquirer

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Sources

3

1

13

10

10

Owl Ventures Fund History

12 Fund Histories

Owl Ventures has 12 funds, including Owl Ventures Opportunity Fund II.

Closing Date

Fund

Fund Type

Status

Amount

Sources

1/12/2022

Owl Ventures Opportunity Fund II

$270M

1

1/12/2022

Owl Ventures V

$640M

1

9/1/2020

Owl Ventures IV

$415M

6

8/31/2020

Owl Ventures Opportunity Fund I

$99M

10

1/23/2019

Owl Ventures III

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$99M

10

Closing Date

1/12/2022

1/12/2022

9/1/2020

8/31/2020

1/23/2019

Fund

Owl Ventures Opportunity Fund II

Owl Ventures V

Owl Ventures IV

Owl Ventures Opportunity Fund I

Owl Ventures III

Fund Type

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Status

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Amount

$270M

$640M

$415M

$99M

$99M

Sources

1

1

6

10

10

Owl Ventures Partners & Customers

1 Partners and customers

Owl Ventures has 1 strategic partners and customers. Owl Ventures recently partnered with Future Planet Capital on November 11, 2017.

Date

Type

Business Partner

Country

News Snippet

Sources

11/28/2017

Partner

United Kingdom

1

Date

11/28/2017

Type

Partner

Business Partner

Country

United Kingdom

News Snippet

Sources

1

Owl Ventures Team

6 Team Members

Owl Ventures has 6 team members, including current Founder, Managing Director, Tory Patterson.

Name

Work History

Title

Status

Tory Patterson

Catamount Ventures, GCA, and Robertson Stephens Partners

Founder, Managing Director

Current

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Name

Tory Patterson

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Work History

Catamount Ventures, GCA, and Robertson Stephens Partners

Title

Founder, Managing Director

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Status

Current

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G
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