What kinds of projects is Norwest targeting?
Norwest is wholly owned by Wells Fargo. Its portfolio companies include Plaid, Spotify, Uber and Vuori. With its new fund, the firm plans to invest in AI-based products and services for key industries.
Norwest senior managing partner Jeff Crowe explained the breadth of the firm’s plans by saying that AI’s impact is not limited to any particular industry, country or application. Like digital transformation, he said, AI could affect many layers of enterprise, consumer and healthcare decision-making — from networking technologies to enterprise IT systems and applications. The shift to an AI-agent environment, Crowe noted, entails broad use of AI in products and services that solve practical problems.
The firm is particularly interested in early-stage startups developing:
Examples of investments and the fund’s scale
Norwest’s recent investments reflect this strategy. The firm invested in Coval, which develops tools for testing and evaluating AI agents, and Generalist AI, a startup that has created foundational AI models for robots.
Norwest’s previous, 17th fund, worth $3 billion, closed in 2024. Since launching it, the firm has made more than 87 investments.
Dataist’s take: The new fund shows that Norwest intends to spread its AI investments across industries and fields, from enterprise applications to robotics. The firm is not limiting its strategy to one type of model or one market, so results will depend on which startups can turn these developments into products that people want.
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