Ex-Omidyar CEO Forms Coalition for Trustworthy AI Investment

Former Omidyar Network CEO Mike Kubzansky has launched Andaris, an investor network aimed at fostering trustworthy AI by facilitating information sharing among large capital allocators. This move directly challenges the prevailing venture capital model focused purely on hyper-growth and market capture, which has dominated AI investment. Coming just as regulators in the EU and US scrutinize AI’s societal harms, Andaris creates a formal coalition for a "responsible scaling" counter-narrative, shifting the focus from technical capabilities to auditable, ethical frameworks. It aims to weaponize coordinated capital as a lever to enforce standards where regulation has yet to tread. Andaris functions as a specialized intelligence and strategy hub for its members, fundamentally altering the due diligence process for ethical AI. For participating LPs and VCs, it provides a shared resource to vet portfolio companies against emerging safety and alignment standards, reducing the proprietary cost of ethics-focused analysis. This creates an asymmetric advantage for members over non-participating firms like Andreessen Horowitz or Sequoia Capital, who may now face pressure from their own LPs to justify their ethical oversight frameworks. The primary losers are startups pursuing high-risk, "move fast and break things" AI applications, who may find fundraising rounds scrutinized by Andaris-aligned investors. The network’s trajectory suggests a future where ethical compliance becomes a key factor in AI startup valuations within 12-18 months, not just a philosophical debate. The critical variable will be whether Andaris’s frameworks are adopted by major asset managers and pension funds, which could make responsible AI a mandatory diligence item. Over the next three years, this could bifurcate the AI funding market into two camps: Andaris-aligned "impact" capital and traditional "growth-at-all-costs" venture funds. The real test will be if an Andaris-backed company foregoes a lucrative but ethically questionable product decision, proving the model’s teeth.