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- Intrepid is investing in the next generation of AI founders emerging from international talent centres, particularly Canada and the UK, as well as the United States and Europe.
- Intrepid was founded by leading institutional investors and AI academics to back the ambitious founders who are building the systems their industries will run on tomorrow.
- Intrepid has already invested in nine portfolio companies, including London-based PhysicsX and Toronto-based StackAdapt.
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TORONTO & LONDON — Intrepid Growth Partners (“Intrepid”), a specialist growth investor dedicated to AI, today announced its formal launch alongside the final close of its inaugural US$525 million fund (“Fund I”).
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Intrepid believes that AI winners will emerge globally, not solely from a single ecosystem. The firm focuses on backing proven AI businesses with the potential to move beyond improving a single task to fundamentally redesigning how their industries work.
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Intrepid was founded in 2023 by Mark Machin, former President & CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Mark Shulgan, former Head of Growth Equity at OMERS, and Ajay Agrawal, Professor at the University of Toronto and a leading AI economist.
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Their shared vision has been to position Intrepid as a specialist AI-focused growth investor dedicated to backing the next generation of AI leaders.
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Intrepid believes that AI winners will emerge globally, not solely from a single ecosystem. The firm focuses on backing proven AI businesses with the potential to move beyond improving a single task to fundamentally redesigning how their industries work.
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Intrepid’s first fund is backed by more than 80 global Limited Partners, including multiple institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds – notably Temasek, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, British Business Bank, Export Development Canada (EDC) and Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) – alongside US and global institutions and leading family offices.
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Intrepid invests in companies with demonstrated commercial traction across a range of sectors, taking a high-conviction approach to backing businesses applying AI to transform established industries and solve complex real-world problems. Intrepid has a particular focus on the Canada-UK corridor, with its deep pool of research and engineering talent, as well as the United States and Europe. Across these markets, Intrepid brings growth capital, conviction, global networks, operational support, and a long-term perspective to help founders build global champions.
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In addition to capital, portfolio companies benefit from Intrepid’s proven institutional platform, with investment professionals across two core offices in Toronto and London, and its network of Growth Partners, Senior Advisers, and AI scientists. This network includes Richard Sutton, 2024 Turing Award winner and pioneer of reinforcement learning, Sendhil Mullainathan, MIT professor and MacArthur Genius, Sir Mike Wigston, former Chief of the Air Staff, Royal Air Force, and Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify, who portfolio companies can access for advice and expertise.
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Article contentMark Machin, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Article content
said:
Article content“At Intrepid, we are singularly focused on finding and backing the next generation of ambitious AI founders. We are grateful for the confidence our Limited Partners have placed in Intrepid and in the team we have built. Their support reflects our shared belief that we are in the midst of a profound period of technology-driven change, and that capturing the opportunity it creates will require different and deeper thinking, and disciplined capital.”Article contentMark Shulgan, Co-founder and Partner, Article content
said:
Article content Article content“AI is changing the investment landscape as profoundly as it is changing business and creating new category leaders. As the range of outcomes widens, investors need to be prepared to challenge established assumptions and think much further ahead. At Intrepid, we start by developing a view of how AI could redefine an industry over the next decade and work backwards from there. We’ve already put that approach into practice with an exceptional group of companies and founders who are on the path to becoming global leaders.”Article contentAjay Agrawal, Co-founder and Partner, Article content
said:
Article content Article content“AI makes prediction dramatically cheaper. Prediction is a key input to decision-making. When the price of an input falls, its scarce complements become more valuable: judgment, proprietary data, distribution, workflow redesign, and the ability to reorganize entire systems. As investors, that is where we are looking: not simply for companies using AI to make an existing task faster, but for founders working towards a vision that exploits low-cost prediction to dramatically improve how some critical goods are produced or a service is delivered and, in doing so, builds enduring global businesses.”Article contentRichard Sutton, Senior Adviser to Intrepid and artificial intelligence research pioneer,Article content
said:
Article content“The rise and spread of AI teaches us not to assume today’s methods define tomorrow’s possibilities. The most important advances have come from systems that learn and discover for themselves. We are now approaching another transition: from AI built predominantly on human data to AI that learns continually from experience. That will create new opportunities for entrepreneurs. Intrepid’s focus on AI’s longer-term trajectory, and on backing people building towards it, makes the firm distinctive.”Article contentThe Honourable Evan Solomon, Canada’s Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation,