Visa launches $100 million venture fund for GenAI startups

Visa, a payments giant has announced that it is launching a $100 million venture fund. The fund is meant to benefit startups within the generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) space. Visa joins other well-established companies like Google and Microsoft who have backed the industry this year. Indeed, the space has gained popularity in recent months.

Visa’s generative AI backing

Generative AI is a technology that generates new content such as images and text based on large sets of past data. In its venture fund, Visa will focus on applications and technologies that will “impact the future of commerce and payments”.

As part of its criteria, the payments giant will be looking to back firms “applying GenAI to solve real problems in commerce, payments, and fintech”.

The firm notes that “this includes B2B processes around payments as well as infrastructure that can have a profound impact on commerce. We are interested in companies at multiple levels of the stack, from data organization for GenAI up to experiences that users will have at work or in their personal lives”. The investments will be made via Visa’s global corporate investment arm - Visa Ventures.

In a written statement released on Monday, the company’s chief product and strategy officer, Jack Forestell stated, “While much of generative AI so far has been focused on tasks and content creation, this technology will soon not only reshape how we live and work, but it will also meaningfully change commerce in ways we need to understand”.

Visa Ventures acknowledges that in the initial stages, the investments may be rather small. Even so, it is capable of handling larger investments.