Your Window Into the Innovation Economy

The venture world has long recognized the outsized influence of alumni networks from breakout companies — none more famous than the PayPal Mafia. But today, we’re seeing the rise of a new and potentially more transformative force: the AI Mafia. At Alumni Ventures, we believe the dense networks forming within companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and others represent one of the most compelling engines of innovation and venture opportunity in a generation. In this piece, we unpack how these “mafias” are forming, why they have structural advantages unlike any previous tech wave, and what this means for the future of startup creation, enterprise adoption, and investment strategy.

Below, we explore nine areas where artificial intelligence will accelerate progress and reshape healthcare by 2035. Along the way, we highlight several Alumni Ventures portfolio companies helping advance these changes. Some ideas may sound like science fiction, but they build on real-world efforts underway across research labs, startups, and industry.

Join Alumni Ventures’ Greg Baker for an in-depth update on the 2020 Total Access Fund (TAF), highlighting key milestones, portfolio progress, and what lies ahead.

Join Alumni Ventures’ Wesley Yiu, Hilary Ncala, and Brian Keil for a practical and informative session designed for investors in Triphammer Ventures who want to better understand what happens after committing capital.

Alumni Ventures’ U.S. Strategic Tech Fund exists to back the builders and technologies shaping America’s future security and competitiveness. Biotechnology is no longer confined to medicine — it’s becoming infrastructure. It’s reshaping national defense, industrial resiliency, and human performance. That’s why we hosted Defying Darwin Night in San Francisco: to gather founders, operators, and national security leaders at the bleeding edge of this transformation.