Aliisa Rosenthal joins Acrew Capital as general partner

Aliisa Rosenthal is joining Acrew Capital as a general partner (GP), a senior role at the venture capital firm where she will work alongside founding partner Lauren Kolodny. Rosenthal left OpenAI about eight months ago following a three-year sprint at the artificial intelligence company. During her tenure, she grew OpenAI’s enterprise sales team from an initial two people to hundreds of employees. Although she was not initially looking to join a venture capital fund, she decided to make the transition to help a broader portfolio of startups with their go-to-market strategies.

At Acrew Capital, Rosenthal plans to focus her investments on the application layer rather than foundational models. Her investment thesis is informed by her time at OpenAI, where she observed a gap between what organizations believe is possible with AI and what they can actually deploy today. She believes that the key to a sustainable startup moat lies in context and memory, moving beyond basic Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)—a method used to minimize AI hallucinations by training models on trusted sources—toward persistent “context graphs.” She also sees market opportunities for cheaper, lighter-weight models that innovate on inference costs. “Where I’m really excited to invest is on the application layer. I’m really interested in what will be the durable applications built on all of these different models, not just on the foundational models,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal’s transition to venture capital follows a growing trend of former OpenAI employees moving into seed-stage investing. About a year ago, Peter Deng, OpenAI’s former head of consumer products, joined the venture capital firm Felicis, where he has invested in startups like LMArena and Periodic Labs. Rosenthal noted that a call with Deng a few months ago helped her make the decision to join Acrew. To source deals, she plans to leverage her network of alumni from OpenAI, which is now 10 years old. This network includes founders of startups ranging from competitor Anthropic to early-stage companies like Safe Superintelligence. Additionally, her contacts among enterprise buyers and beta testers will serve as a resource for early-stage startups looking to bridge the deployment gap.

Why it matters

Rosenthal’s move highlights a trend of former OpenAI employees transitioning into seed-stage venture capital. These investors leverage their operational networks and understanding of enterprise needs to identify and support early-stage AI application startups.