{
  "id": 10937707,
  "title": "Two Google alumni raise $11.3M to back AI startups that enterprises will actually pay for",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/30/two-google-alumni-raise-11-3m-to-back-ai-startups-that-enterprises",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-30T12:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechCrunch",
    "slug": "techcrunch",
    "url": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/bag-ventures-sets-its-eyes-deeper-into-the-ai-stack/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Bonita Stewart and Jackson Georges Jr., both former Google employees, have launched a $11.3 million fund to invest in early-stage AI startups. The venture, BAG Ventures, is focused on companies that can demonstrate real value to enterprises. Stewart previously spent 17 years at Google, including nearly a decade as a vice president, while Georges worked at GE Healthcare and Google before becoming a partner at CapitalG. They co-founded BAG Collective, an angel syndicate with over 450 members, and are both involved in other investment funds.\n\nBAG Ventures aims to address the \"AI divide\" between founders and operators by providing founders with access to potential customers and go-to-market advice. The fund invests in areas such as AI infrastructure, compute, physical and edge AI, security, governance, and vertical SaaS, with check sizes ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. The team hopes to invest the remaining capital over the next two years.\n\nGeorges believes the era of enterprise AI experimentation is ending, and companies are now focusing on unit economics and deterministic solutions. He expects a shift from per-user SaaS subscriptions to paying for completed jobs and outcomes driven by multi-agent workflows. BAG Ventures seeks teams with core technical expertise, a minimum viable product, and a clear path to monetization within 24 hours. They also prioritize companies that can capture proprietary data and operate in highly regulated industries. With the launch of more products from frontier AI labs, BAG Ventures is looking for startups that own the intent layer and have customer lock-in to survive future model releases.",
  "summary": "BAG Ventures announces close of a $11.3M Fund I to invest in all things AI.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}