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This morning, BetaKit broke the news: Forum Ventures has raised a $20M USD fund to expand our AI Venture Studio. You can read their full exclusive here. In this post, we wanted to speak directly to founders and partners about what this fund means, why we believe the studio model is so important right now, and who we’re building it for.
What is Forum Ventures’ AI venture studio?
The Forum Ventures AI Studio is a company formation vehicle designed for one specific purpose: to help domain expert founders validate and build AI-native B2B companies from day zero. With this new $20M in committed capital, we plan to co-build 30 new companies across North America. We’ve already launched 17. Now we’re ready to keep going.
Our Venture Studio is not an accelerator (we already have one of those, and it’s world-class). It is not a pre-seed fund (we have one of those, too!).
The AI Studio begins before all of that. We start with conviction around a market we believe in. Then we find a founder who’s lived the problem. Or, we meet a founder with a problem they can’t stop thinking about. Then we validate, launch, and co-build the company together. From scratch.
"We partner with domain experts, people who’ve lived the problem, to turn deep industry insight into AI-native solutions," says Jonah Midanik, General Partner at Forum Ventures. "Our venture studio gives them what they can’t get anywhere else: capital, operators, and customer access from day one. That’s what turns early conviction into traction and long-term advantage."
Why we built our venture studio
When we launched the studio quietly in 2023 with a $10M pilot fund, we weren’t sure how many people would raise their hands to build with us from zero. But they did. And we saw what happens when a founder walks in with lived experience and, just weeks later, is prototyping with real users, validating price sensitivity, and having early customer conversations, with our team by their side.
Since 2014, Forum has existed to support early-stage founders with hands-on help through our accelerator. These are founders, or co-founders, that already have the beginnings of a company. We’ve backed over 500 B2B SaaS companies that have gone on to raise more than $1B in follow-on funding.
Over time, our team uncovered incredible market opportunities that weren’t coming to us through the accelerator. We had hunches we wanted to validate, and once we validated them, we needed the right founders to build with.
That pilot fund delivered: 63% of companies launched through our venture studio have raised follow-on capital within 12 months. That gave our LPs the confidence to double down. With Fund II now closed, we’re making it official.
"The AI Studio is an extension of the mission we started Forum with in 2014," says Michael Cardamone, Founder and CEO of Forum Ventures. "We wanted to make the founder journey less alone. Now, we’re joining forces with founders even earlier – sometimes as early as pre-idea – and surrounding them with a full team across product, engineering, GTM, and fundraising."
What does a venture studio model look like?
A lot of founders are unfamiliar with the studio model or aren't quite sure how it differs from accelerators or pre-seed funds. But for someone who's between ventures, has a problem they've been noodling on, or is founder-curious but not ready to go it alone, a venture studio can be the ideal launchpad: a co-building model that de-risks the earliest stage by surrounding you with a team from day zero.
At Forum, founders work 1:1 with our team to test your assumptions, run market and customer diligence, and shape early product direction. From there, we get clear answers on market size, competitive positioning, and investor appetite. And then, we co-build with our founders, grow the company, and raise a first institutional round.
More on why building with a venture studio is worth it here.
How is Forum Ventures’ venture studio unique?
Most studios talk about being hands-on. Here’s what that actually means inside Forum:
- $250K USD at formation. Every company starts with capital upon incorporation.
- Full-stack support. Founders co-build with our in-house experts across product, design, engineering, GTM, growth marketing, HR, finance, and legal.
- Market-first, founder-led. We begin with whitespace markets we’re bullish on, then pair with founders who have lived experience in the problem. Alternatively, founders might come to us with a problem they are bullish on and know needs solving, but want a team to do it with. Together, we validate.
- AI-native playbooks. We’ve built a new way to build. That includes same-week MVPs, real-time design partner feedback, leaner sales motions, and operating discipline tailored to the AI era.
- 1:1 Fundraising support. Studio companies participate in one of our four annual Investor Showcases, with comprehensive preparation and warm introductions across our network of 3,000+ Seed and Series A VCs.
- Continuous support. As companies scale, they graduate into Forum’s broader pre-seed support platform
"The speed at which we can take a concept to MVP today is radically different from five years ago," says Alice Krenitski, Head of Studio. "We’re not just validating ideas, we’re building and testing them in days, not months."
What kinds of companies has Forum’s AI studio launched?
To date, the studio has launched 17 companies across sectors like vertical AI, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, fintech, supply chain, privacy, and AI infrastructure. Notable examples include:
- Luro Health: Founded in June 2024 by Steve Kuyan, building a drug-agnostic weight management platform tailored to Medicare/Medicaid.
- Amoeba: Founded in May 2024 by Tooba Durraze, serving as an AI-powered data scientist for GTM teams.
- Pegasi: Founded in August 2023 by Kevin Wu, helping enterprises simulate, steer, and deploy self-improving AI agents.
“The earliest stage of company formation is where most founders get stuck — validating the problem, pressure-testing assumptions, finding design partners, building the first real version. Forum collapses that entire cycle," explains Dr. Tooba Durraze, Founder & CEO, Amoeba AI. "Their team treated my problem space with the same intensity I did, and that co-building muscle is the reason Amoeba went from an idea to a fully deployed AI system inside enterprise GTM teams in months.”
Why is now the right time for AI-native venture studios?
There’s no shortage of AI-native products being built. But many of them are solving incremental problems in well-trodden markets. The opportunity we see is bigger.
The best AI-native companies don’t come from opportunistic wrappers. They come from domain experts who deeply understand a market; its workflows, regulatory bottlenecks, buying behavior, and what the end user really needs. These are founders who have lived the problem, and who bring context no generalist can replicate.
What they often lack is the support to move quickly, and the team to go end-to-end. That’s where we come in.
"Designing an AI-native company isn’t just about building a feature set. It’s about rethinking the operating system of the startup itself," says Teija Bean, Head of Product Design. "We’re obsessed with scoping smarter and validating faster. Getting to real signals without wasting time or capital."
Together, we take an insight and turn it into something real, with structure, speed, and conviction.
"We’ve codified a playbook that balances rapid prototyping with clean architecture," adds Karthik Srinivasan, CTO at Forum’s Venture studio. "It lets us move fast without creating technical debt founders have to unwind later." Karthik talks about this in depth in his zero-to-one engineering playbook for scalable startups.
Studios, done right, let you move faster, with deeper insight, and de-risk the earliest, most fragile part of company formation. That’s where we come in.
Read more about our mindset in Redefining MVPs: Startups Overbuild.
Where does Forum’s venture studio operate?
Forum has teams across New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, and works with founders across North America. Our AI Studio team is primarily based in Toronto, where 12 of our 15 full-time studio team members operate, and all studio founders kick off their build sprint in person. Canada’s talent density and early-stage hunger have made it a powerful home base for zero-to-one building.
At the same time, we’ve seen U.S.-based founders from New York to San Francisco thrive inside our studio model. From first prototype to first customers, this is a cross-border operation designed to meet founders wherever they are, as long as they’re ready to build.
How can founders join Forum’s AI Studio?
We’re currently sourcing founders for the next wave of studio companies. If you’re an experienced operator with deep conviction about a market problem, and you’re excited to co-build a company the right way from day zero, we want to meet you.
To understand how founders actually get started with us, see The First Step to Launch a Company with the Forum Ventures AI Studio.
You can explore some of the current themes and markets we’re bullish on here or reach out directly to ksenia@forumvc.com. We build fast, and we start with care.
The AI Studio is open. Let’s build.
FAQ: Forum Ventures AI Venture Studio
What is the Forum Ventures AI Studio?
The AI Studio is a venture studio that co-builds B2B AI-native software companies with domain expert founders. It provides capital, full-stack support, and customer access from day zero.
How is a venture studio different from an accelerator or pre-seed fund?
Unlike accelerators or funds, the AI Studio starts before a company, or even an idea, exists. We work with founders to validate new ideas, test early signals, and get clear on what to build next, and then co-build a company together from scratch, providing capital and in-house support across product, design, engineering, GTM, and fundraising. Founders retain majority ownership and control.
Who is the ideal founder for the Forum AI Studio?
Someone with deep domain expertise who has lived a specific problem — often a repeat founder, technical operator, or expert at an inflection point in their career — who wants to build, but doesn’t want to build alone.
How much funding do studio companies receive?
Each company receives $250K USD at formation, alongside operational and strategic support from Forum’s in-house studio team. Founders retain majority ownership and control the board.
Where is the Forum AI Studio based?
The studio team is primarily based in Toronto, with additional Forum teams in New York and San Francisco. We work with founders across North America, with a company formation and kick off sprint in Toronto.
What industries does the studio focus on?
We’re actively building in vertical AI, AI agents, healthcare, fintech, advanced manufacturing, supply chain, and AI infrastructure.
Do I need an idea to apply?
No. We often start with the market first. If you bring insight and conviction, we’ll validate and build together.
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