Worldcoin co-founder Novendstern is leaving the startup to start a new venture – TechCrunch

Max Novendstern, co-founder and former CEO of Worldcoin, has left the well-known startup to launch a new venture, according to sources and regulatory filings and investor information obtained by TechCrunch.

A spokesperson for Worldcoin confirmed that Novendstern is no longer involved with the startup, but said he continues to advise the firm. Novendstern did not respond to a message on Twitter on Wednesday.

His new venture is called Mana, and it’s creating an “artificial intelligence venture capitalist that will operate autonomously on-chain,” or “Blackrock for the new economy,” according to an investor deck. The startup is in talks with Tribe Capital, Multicoin Capital, Dragonfly and Variant to raise funds, according to sources familiar with the matter.

“Their goal is a common Al that can analyze any company and then fund it with one click. The goal is a venture model that scales like software – no marginal cost: anyone in the world can raise; anyone can invest; and as Al gets better with scale, the system gets better at flywheel. The core of their system is a “program memorandum,” a source described Mana’s business.

“For any investment criteria (eg team, product, strategy, etc.) Al predicts the analyst’s opinion. Predictions are derived by pipelines of data split between neural networks and human labels. Analysts use the tool to work faster; with the tool they train Als (“GitHub Copilot for Investors”). Success means outperforming all funds in the world in terms of capital flow and cost of capital in an ever-increasing market. Venture firms are no longer limited to early equity checks in the Gulf. Rather, the new market entails the underwriting of all asset classes—debt, equity, and tokens—in all cities and industries simultaneously, as software globalization enters the “other half of the chessboard.”