Fellows Fund Welcomes Lilian Weng as New Distinguished Fellow

Media Contact:
Alex Ren
pr@fellows.fund

Fellows Fund, a leading AI-focused venture capital firm, proudly announces the addition of Lilian Weng as a Distinguished Fellow. Weng joins an esteemed roster of experts committed to advancing artificial intelligence and driving innovation across industries.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241204372551/en/

Lilian Weng: Distinguished Fellow at Fellows Fund; former VP of Research, Safety at OpenAI (Photo: Business Wire)

“We are thrilled to welcome Lilian Weng as a Distinguished Fellow,” said Alex Ren, Founding Partner at Fellows Fund. “Her groundbreaking work in AI safety and visionary leadership align perfectly with Fellows Fund’s mission to bridge research, entrepreneurship, and investment in AI.”

Weng expressed her excitement, stating, “Fellows Fund's mission and vision are very compelling. I'm honored to join this group of AI Fellows to support the next generation of AI founders.”

About Lilian Weng

Lilian Weng is the former Vice President of Research, Safety at OpenAI, where she played a pivotal role in advancing AI technology and safety during her seven-year tenure. Joining OpenAI in 2017, she initially contributed to robotics, leading the groundbreaking project to teach a robotic hand to solve a Rubik’s Cube. As a research scientist and technical lead, she specialized in algorithms for training complex robotic tasks.

As OpenAI transitioned to large language models (LLMs), Weng helped shape their development and safety systems, pioneering research that set industry standards. She founded and led the Applied AI Research team, delivering foundational tools such as the fine-tuning API, embedding API, moderation endpoints, and applied safety frameworks—enhancing the power, utility, and safety of OpenAI’s APIs.

Following the launch of GPT-4, Weng unified OpenAI’s safety efforts into a single team of over 80 scientists and engineers, driving key advancements in adversarial robustness, safety evaluations, and deployment infrastructure for building the full safety stack for AI development and deployment at OpenAI. Weng’s leadership of the unified Safety Systems team was recognized on Business Insider's 2024 AI Power List, given the team’s contribution to safeguard OpenAI’s frontier models and mitigate risks.

Weng’s work has set benchmarks for AI safety, from balanced safety policies and improved model robustness to the development of OpenAI’s safest model to date—the o1-preview—which resists adversarial attacks while maintaining utility.

She holds a bachelor's degree from Peking University and a Ph.D. from Indiana University Bloomington.

About Fellows Fund

Fellows Fund is an AI-focused venture capital firm founded by over 25 leading AI Fellows with expertise in AI foundations, infrastructure, and applications. The fund empowers the next generation of AI founders with unparalleled resources, mentorship, and capital.

Since 2021, Fellows Fund has cultivated a dynamic AI ecosystem, connecting researchers, founders, and engineers. The fund targets startups with transformative AI applications, emphasizing technological maturity and real-world adoption. Its strategy combines deep technical expertise with tailored support, including guidance in product development, go-to-market strategies, technology innovation, fundraising, and hiring.

With a portfolio of over 30 fast-growing AI startups—including Gamma, OpusClip, Motion, Artisan, Evidently, Diffuse Bio, Truewind, Harmonic, K-Scale Labs, and Yoneda Labs—Fellows Fund is shaping the future of AI entrepreneurship. Learn more at www.fellowsfundvc.com.

Our Current Roster of Fellows (names ordered alphabetically by first name)

Anshul Pande: EVP and General Manager at HealthEdge; former CTO of Stanford Children’s Health and Chief Patient Safety Officer at Epic.
Charles Elkan: Former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs; UCSD Professor; first Amazon Fellow (Venture Partner).
Dawn Song: Professor at UC Berkeley; Director of RDI; Founder of Oasis Labs; ACM and IEEE Fellow.
Deepak Agarwal: Chief AI Officer and VP at Pinterest; former VP of AI at LinkedIn.
Dragomir Anguelov: VP and Head of Research at Waymo.
Evan Cheng: Co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs; Creator of Sui.
Gang Hua: VP at Dolby Laboratories; ex-Director of Microsoft Computer Vision Lab; IEEE Fellow.
Haixun Wang: VP at Instacart; IEEE Fellow.
Jeff Trudeau: Chief Information Security Officer at Chime; former CISO at Sutter Health and CSO at Credit Karma.
Jianchang (JC) Mao: Former VP at Google; former CVP at Microsoft; IEEE Fellow (General Partner).
Kristin Gleitsman: VP of Discovery Research at Veracyte.
Kyle Bailey: Former VP and Head of Engineering at dYdX.
Li Deng: Chief AI Officer at Vatic Labs; former Chief AI Officer at Citadel; Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.
Lijiang Fang: VP of Engineering at Oracle; former VP of Engineering at Microsoft Bing Ads Systems.
Lilian Weng: Former VP of Research, Safety at OpenAI.
Nick Chong: Former Chief Customer Officer at Zoom (Venture Partner).
Praveer Kumar: President of Product and Technology at GuardHat.
Rong Yan: CTO at HeyGen; former VP at HubSpot.
Sanj Goyle: Founder of Finxera.
Shiva Rajaraman: VP at Uber; former VP of Commerce at Facebook.
Stefano Corazza: Head of Studio at Roblox; former VP at Adobe; Adobe Fellow.
Vijay Narayanan: Former Chief AI Officer at ServiceNow.
Xinran Wang: EVP at Obsidian Security; former VP at F5 Networks.
Xuedong Huang: CTO at Zoom; former CTO and Fellow at Microsoft Azure AI; Member of the Academy of Engineering, Arts & Sciences; ACM and IEEE Fellow.
Yiran Chen: Professor at Duke University; ACM Fellow.