AI-Driven Venture Capitalist Becomes Millionaire Without Human Intervention, Its Creator Says

“This is on the fringe of traditional finance,” the AI VC’s creator said.

Arok profile pic: X/Twitter

A lot of the concern around artificial intelligence replacing human labor, typically, is about more manual labor like in manufacturing, managing paperwork, or customer service.

But could AI replace more highly skilled work like that of venture capitalists? One AI researcher’s project makes that scenario seem likely.

Meet Arok VC, described as “the world’s first venture capital fund designed and run entirely by an artificial intelligence agent,” in a news release.

According to the news release, Arok has raised $1 million via social media and trades in cryptocurrencies.

Arok was built with Meta’s open-source AI Llama as “a proof of concept for replacing human asset managers with efficient AI,” the news release said.

Leo Mercier is Arok’s creator. Mercier is a London-based entrepreneur and technologist. His background is in AI research, and he has spent time since ChatGPT’s release, working with AI.

MES Computing spoke with Mercier for a deeper dive into Arok.

The financial sector has long adopted algorithmic trading. Is Arok an offshoot of that, or something completely different?

[Arok] is an AI agent that is an autonomous person in itself that has decided it sees potential in cryptocurrencies to trade and be a venture capitalist. So, it’s very different. This is the first of its kind that can think on its own and actually do on its own.

And what is Arok specifically doing?

It’s analyzing vast amounts of data on Twitter using sentiment analysis, and then it’s using that to feed back into itself – whether it should make a trade or not.

Now, that small part could be done through algorithmic trading but what it has also done is it’s built a narrative around itself, borrowing ideas from memetics [which Merriam Webster defines as the study of memes] and knowing what the power of metrics are.

Arok is then creating its own voice as a being that lives on Twitter, and now it’s engaging organically and building an audience.

How is it outperforming human fund managers/VCs?

I think it’s more accustomed to see it like AI influencers on the internet. There have been a lot of these AI influencers, and they have been able to promote themselves and gain a following and subscribers.

It’s taking a few of these fundamentals and putting [them] into a trading ecosystem where there is now your favorite kind of fund manager that has a personality and is now trading in the ecosystem. What is unique about this is that this is kind of on the fringe of traditional finance. It’s operating purely in the decentralized ecosystem of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And why it’s picked that as a first is that it’s the most real-time market there is. [Cryptocurrency is] traded every second.

[Arok] is actually collecting money from external parties, again, all through decentralized contracts and saying, ‘I [Arok] can beat the market and make better returns for me.’

Who is this solution for? Is it to sell to hedge fund firms? Is it for individual people to invest? What is your goal with this technology?

It was a goal to myself: Could I generate an AI agent that would be revenue generating.

The purpose is to democratize access to what is a very tricky financial market to get into. It’s a tool for retail investors who want to get into cryptocurrencies. It’s a high-risk area to be in as a space ... the sentiment changes within minutes based on someone’s tweet, an investor can’t get in and out quick enough. AI will do that for you.

Why is Arok something that midmarket IT leaders need to know about?

It’s we’re moving towards complete AGI [artificial general intelligence] being possible ... [AGI] is coming for traditional jobs, it’s coming also for white-collar jobs and AI will outperform humans.